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I'm posting this mainly to hear some new ideas.
I'm a nid player , my best friend plays CSM.
He's been pretty disheartened lately as he keeps losing to my friends (eldar, tau, necrons, space wolves and of course, Tyranids)
He's on a pretty bad losing streak. Simply letting him win won't do. Just played him with my new nids, tabled him turn 4.

Here is my list @ 1500pts

Flyrant
Flyrant

Crone
Crone
Harpy

Tervigon
Gaunts

Exocrine

Anyone got any ideas as to what he should run against me? He just walked off muttering something about 'needing to take six troops of chosen'

Any help would be appreciated.

What kind of stuff does your friend usually play with?

 Truth118 wrote:
What kind of stuff does your friend usually play with?

He has access to pretty much anything from the main CSM book.
Some units (like maulerfiends) he has never used but would be willing to try. He has two hell drakes as well.

Tonight I fought some mix of Noise Marines, Nurgle Bikers, CSMs and Havoks. Not a great list against mine.

What he finds the most disheartening is the survivability of his HQs against MCs / smash.
At least, against me that is. Gone are the days of trolling with Typhus.

He's thinking Chosen and Demon Princes are his only viable counters to Nids (with Drake support)

That is a nice tyranid list. Lot's of FMC for the opponent to deal with. Your opponent is going to need some decent AA or a huge amount of MSU shooting.

Unfortunately without any idea of what type of army your friend has and what house rules you play under commenting would just cause confusion. Here are the most essential questions that could tip the list building in any which way:

Does he have any chaos daemons to ally with?

Does he have 2 helldrakes?

How many oblits?

Do you guys play using forgeworld, stronghold assault, and/or escalation?

Does he play cultist list or CSM lists?

Does he have Be'Lakor?

Finally does he own any fortifications?

 ansacs wrote:
That is a nice tyranid list. Lot's of FMC for the opponent to deal with. Your opponent is going to need some decent AA or a huge amount of MSU shooting.

Unfortunately without any idea of what type of army your friend has and what house rules you play under commenting would just cause confusion. Here are the most essential questions that could tip the list building in any which way:

Thanks! Was literately something I threw together. The target saturation was insane.

Does he have any chaos daemons to ally with?

Not yet. He has the CSM supplement. I think he just dislikes the idea of running non-CSMs.

Does he have 2 helldrakes?

Yes he does.

How many oblits?

Only 3 atm

Do you guys play using forgeworld, stronghold assault, and/or escalation?

Straightforward. We aren't against playing with those items / rules.

Does he play cultist list or CSM lists?

He has a giant pile of cultists. I'll say CSM though.

Does he have Be'Lakor?

I don't think he knows what that is. I sure don't.

Finally does he own any fortifications?

Not yet, but something we have been talking about.

A quad gun is ideal for gunning down nid flyers for one, because of their silly 4+ armor.

I wonder what he wants chosen so badly for; I'd much rather take plague marines myself, but against your army they'd probably only be good for firm objective holding and thinning the swarm of gaunts, so maybe not worth it.

Access to daemon allies opens up a lot of new options.

Nurgle obliterators are really good and could switch between firing their lascannons at the tervigon/exocrine and firing assault cannons at the flyers, but they'd have to beware your exocrine.

Havocs with autocannons maybe?

At least one of the two drakes should use a hades autocannon.

So your friend really needs to be able to kill 2 flyrants and 1 tervi. If your friend can do that you will loose synapse and he can mop up your gaunts for an assured tie or win.

The positives your friend has is that he has two helldrakes (baleflamer I hope).

The negatives being; 1)he seems to lack reasonably priced skyfire (only source of this is forgeworld CSM flyers and GW fortifications) and 2) lack of oblits which are a great tool kit unit for killing nids.

However not all is lost.

For future reference Be'Lakor is a model and data slate that can be used as an HQ choice in CSM armies. He has eternal warrior, is pretty good in melee, and most importantly knows all the telepathy powers http://www.blacklibrary.com/games-workshop-digital-editions/Dataslate-Belakor.html
He is incredible for a CSM army but fairly priced.

So the first thing in his list is two helldrakes.

I would then go with 3 one man units of nurgle oblits. This maximized the number of grounding tests he can force on you and keeps him from needing a better Ld on the oblits. These guys will be very useful for DS next to your tervi and plasma-ing it to death or if needed HF-ing your gaunts.

With the selections of units you have stated I would probably go with 3 units of 5 man squads of 2x plasmagun plague marines. They are fearless, Sv3+, and FnP so they would not be very easy to kill and they can still do decent damage. Throw them in rhino's for some mobility to get where they are needed and waste a turn of your vector strikes. They are also a threat to your MC once they are grounded as the poisoned attacks makes them decent in CC and the plasma can kill the MC pretty quick. Your friend should start his shooting phases trying to ground your flyrants with the combi bolters on the rhinos.

Then I would take a nurgle chaos lord on bike with LC and PF for a cheap HQ to unlock the plague marines and a decent CC threat. He should never willingly come near your MC unless they are down to their last wounds and are not a flyrant.

To go with the chaos lord I would take a small unit of nurgle bikers with melta (or if he is specifically writing the list to kill you then plasma). This gives more grounding tests and a fast unit that can contest and in general be where needed.

That should be 2000 pts and if played right he should be able to win the game. It is also a decent overall list with the limitations above.

He really should think about getting an ADL, firestorm redoubt, or quad lascannon vengeance battery to handle his AA needs.

 ansacs wrote:
So your friend really needs to be able to kill 2 flyrants and 1 tervi. If your friend can do that you will loose synapse and he can mop up your gaunts for an assured tie or win.

The positives your friend has is that he has two helldrakes (baleflamer I hope).

The negatives being; 1)he seems to lack reasonably priced skyfire (only source of this is forgeworld CSM flyers and GW fortifications) and 2) lack of oblits which are a great tool kit unit for killing nids.

However not all is lost.

For future reference Be'Lakor is a model and data slate that can be used as an HQ choice in CSM armies. He has eternal warrior, is pretty good in melee, and most importantly knows all the telepathy powers http://www.blacklibrary.com/games-workshop-digital-editions/Dataslate-Belakor.html
He is incredible for a CSM army but fairly priced.

So the first thing in his list is two helldrakes.

I would then go with 3 one man units of nurgle oblits. This maximized the number of grounding tests he can force on you and keeps him from needing a better Ld on the oblits. These guys will be very useful for DS next to your tervi and plasma-ing it to death or if needed HF-ing your gaunts.

With the selections of units you have stated I would probably go with 3 units of 5 man squads of 2x plasmagun plague marines. They are fearless, Sv3+, and FnP so they would not be very easy to kill and they can still do decent damage. Throw them in rhino's for some mobility to get where they are needed and waste a turn of your vector strikes. They are also a threat to your MC once they are grounded as the poisoned attacks makes them decent in CC and the plasma can kill the MC pretty quick. Your friend should start his shooting phases trying to ground your flyrants with the combi bolters on the rhinos.

Then I would take a nurgle chaos lord on bike with LC and PF for a cheap HQ to unlock the plague marines and a decent CC threat. He should never willingly come near your MC unless they are down to their last wounds and are not a flyrant.

To go with the chaos lord I would take a small unit of nurgle bikers with melta (or if he is specifically writing the list to kill you then plasma). This gives more grounding tests and a fast unit that can contest and in general be where needed.

That should be 2000 pts and if played right he should be able to win the game. It is also a decent overall list with the limitations above.

He really should think about getting an ADL, firestorm redoubt, or quad lascannon vengeance battery to handle his AA needs.

Thanks for your post! I do like what I've read so far.

This game was 1500pts, not 2000. At 2k, I'd double FoC. That's more synapse and more MCs.
Again, if I go easy on him, he'd be pissed. He has to beat me on a level playing field; that's just the kind of guy he is. So that x2 more Flyrants minimum.

Yea, killing those three synapse creatures assures victory. Gaunts would fail their tests. While I did win by taking objectives (we played the scourging) I only brought two troops to the fight. Capturing with this list isn't the intended victory. Birthing just makes it possible.

We will most certainly look into fortifications. A buddy of ours uses an ADL. I've killed the quad gun first turn with tentaclids. So thats a double edged sword.
For $3.00, i'll make sure Bel'akor joins his ranks.

I've never heard of / seen nurgle oblitz. I assumed they were chaos unaligned. I will be mentioning those to him.

List aside, I would have won. He went first and night fighting was in effect. Due to the fact I literately made a 30man line with my gaunts, he did a total of two wounds to the harpy and killed a single gaunt while moving towards me, allowing me to close the gap turn 1 and negate NF's effects while ensuring CC turn 2. It was a tactical mistake on his part. I do hope though that a new list / idea will help.

The list concept above comes out to 1500 pts with the addition of a chaos cultist squad. So no quad flyrant for you. BTW double FOC actually makes nids pretty good. Having your best unit spammable in the HQ slot does that to you I guess.

Not sure how you managed to kill a W2 T7 Sv3+ Cover Sv 4+ artillery unit with 4 S5 AP5 shots? If you are getting that lucky then there isn't any advice or strategy that can win as you will kill riptides with gaunts.

The lack of scoring is always the weakness of FMC circus lists. Daemons and tyranids actually field fairly similar lists these days.

Oblits are default unmarked but can be marked for points. Mark of nurgle is great because it gets them to that all important toughness 5.

I have often found that in most of my games the lists and armies used were less important than the decisions made during the game and deployment. (and sometimes just key rolls) Hopefully your friend can find a list that clicks with him. If you haven't already I would recommend checking out the batrep portion of the website. There are some really great CSM players (though most use CD, IG, or necrons with them) and Jy2 has been doing a run on the tyranids batreps, though he has not gotten his crones/exocrine/ect. ready to play with.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW the Be'Lakor model and rules are some of my favorite recent purchases in 40K.

 ansacs wrote:
The list concept above comes out to 1500 pts with the addition of a chaos cultist squad. So no quad flyrant for you. BTW double FOC actually makes nids pretty good. Having your best unit spammable in the HQ slot does that to you I guess.

Not sure how you managed to kill a W2 T7 Sv3+ Cover Sv 4+ artillery unit with 4 S5 AP5 shots? If you are getting that lucky then there isn't any advice or strategy that can win as you will kill riptides with gaunts.

The lack of scoring is always the weakness of FMC circus lists. Daemons and tyranids actually field fairly similar lists these days.

Oblits are default unmarked but can be marked for points. Mark of nurgle is great because it gets them to that all important toughness 5.

I have often found that in most of my games the lists and armies used were less important than the decisions made during the game and deployment. (and sometimes just key rolls) Hopefully your friend can find a list that clicks with him. If you haven't already I would recommend checking out the batrep portion of the website. There are some really great CSM players (though most use CD, IG, or necrons with them) and Jy2 has been doing a run on the tyranids batreps, though he has not gotten his crones/exocrine/ect. ready to play with.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW the Be'Lakor model and rules are some of my favorite recent purchases in 40K.

That should be 2000 pts and if played right he should be able to win the game. It is also a decent overall list with the limitations above.

I saw this from your previous post. I play nids, not CSMs. I don't have his codex on hand. So don't quip at me for saying I'd go double FoC :p I only have your words to go off of. And its 6am.

And clearly, the quad gun was a mistake. We treated it as a building, so haywire (2+ to glance). Seeing that it has a toughness actually makes me feel like I played dirty. Will not happen again. I suppose I should say my friend should know his own fortifications as he brought the item. But I honestly didn't know either as I thought it'd be like any other building (I myself was looking to try the venomthrope bastion trick that I keep reading about.) So my mistake here, back to the drawing board and I'll inform my mate. We didn't give it cover either as It was on the defense line, not behind it.

Yea, I'd run more scoring if I could. Won't lie, I love nidzilla. And the wounds are still deep from biomancy.

I've been keeping up with the battlereps. I've tried to use them as a primer to understand some of the changes more. For awhile, I watched youtube videos and would cringe when I saw misplays / rules being broken. I'm a very strict RAW player; I try my absolute damnest to play by every rule and any game where I won (such as the ADL game) I'll count as a loss for not playing it to the letter.

I've never seen / heard of an oblit taking a mark. So I will mention your suggestion.

I'm researching him as we speak. Seems incredible from what I'm reading.