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I'm going to be fighting my first Tyranid player tomorrow as Chaos Space Marines, but I know almost nothing about Tyranids. Are there general tactics against Tyranids that I should know? Even specific ones for CSM units that I should probably use! Thanks!

ArDeZe wrote:
I'm going to be fighting my first Tyranid player tomorrow as Chaos Space Marines, but I know almost nothing about Tyranids. Are there general tactics against Tyranids that I should know? Even specific ones for CSM units that I should probably use! Thanks!

Nids have two "problem areas" for you. Monsterous Creatures, and Swarmy units. So Flamers are your friend, and so is high str good AP weapons. (like say...Plasma weapons)

CSM have access to both those, so that is good. Tyranids also suffer vs vehicles, so 1 or 2 of those is a good thing as well.

I play chaos as well brother and some of my first games were against Tyranids. Aim at the big guys fist and second and third until they are dead. As nervous as you will get watching all those gaunts coming at you, trust me the big guys are way scarier. Depending on the point cost i would take two squads of either 8 plague marines or 10 regular csms in reserve to come on ONLY when the the tyranids hit your table edge which if you dont kill ALL of the big guys they will.

Kill the Synapse creatures first, watch instinctive behavior screw over the entire army. I recommend Krak missiles, Plasma, and Lascannons. Very few Tyranid units have good saves, invulnerable saves are incredibly rare, and synapse creatures are more vulnerable than ever due to a loss of rule book powers. With Tervigons still a (now horribly overcosted) crutch unit to some degree and punishing the player even more when they die, killing them off leads to much of the Swarm vanishing anyway.

Ignore the smaller creatures unless they absolutely force your hand. Also, feel free to deploy heavy vehicles, Tyranid ranged anti-tank (not vehicle) capability is generally poor at best. Helbrutes still suck and will get their faces beaten in by nearly any TMC you pit them against in assault, so go with Termicide if you absolutely must have elites.

Also the Tyranids aren't so much an assault army as they are a short ranged army. Nearly every weapon they have is assault and rare is the Tyranid weapon that fires beyond bolter range, however they can put a lot of shots down at short range. Pretty much none of it will beat your armor saves unless you're heavy on cultists, but like Ork and Guard shooting the intent is to both simply have more bodies to absorb losses in a shoot out to an extent any CSM build except Cultist blob simply can't and throwing enough shots to make you fail your saves anyway.

Addittionally, the Tyranid army is not well suited for defensive play. If you can force the Tyranid player off the offensive you'll find your job much easier. Tyranid anti-air has improved, but it's still not terribly good, but unfortunately for you Heldrakes aren't particularly well suited for killing Tyranids. Blobs don't care about losing a torrent's worth of models, the Tyranids don't hide in metal boxes for the drakes to Open, and Monstrous creatures have enough wounds to keep on fighting past anything the Heldrake can inflict in one go.

Kill synapse and monstrous creatures first. The post above me was 100% correct. I also recommend dirge casters. Sometimes you can't really afford to waste all your shots on a 6 wound monstrous creature and just need to tarpit it. Plague marines are awesome for this. 5 toughness, 3+ armor, 5+ FNP. Not to mention poison 4+. If you put some wounds on it already, Plagues can kill the MCs. Also, I found a sorcerer with a force weapon is good against MCs. You only need to deal one wound to kill that way. Heldrakes as usual are great. Vector strike MCs. Baleflamer to thin the swarms.

Sorry for that post being all over the place with ideas.

Only 1 unit in the our codex has ranged AP2. We also rely on toughness, and only have a 1 2+ save, so I would say strength 8 ap3 is our bane. (Missiles and power fists will mess nids up. Added bonus that missiles can deal with swarms too!). Flamers for the little guys.

Ignore almost everything written so far . A good tyranid army will have lots of 3+/2+ cover saves, lots of FMC and a horde that you cannot ignore. Dont focus synapse unless your oponent is playing with less than 3 sypnapse nodes. Focus Venonthorpes in case your oponent is using them isntead. In case your enemy uses Gargoyles spam try to dimish the unnits to 4-3 and then let them like that till the last turn so they dont come back full strength.
Focus FMC 1 by 1 trying to ground the ones next to your melee units. Kill flyrants first.
Stay in cover, use 3 heldrakes positioning them in order to avoid FMC vector strike and rear shots. Your drakes moves 36`` his FMC only 24`` play the flyers game and win. Use a comunication system to decide when to come from reserves. Ally Traitor IG and get some vendetas, Hydras and Sabre plataforms. CSM without allyes are not competitive nowerdays. If you cannot ally IG then search for an army with lots of Skyfire and interception. Use Velketor if you can. Use a Demon prince as well. Use an Imperial Bastion with a quad gun and fill it with devastators with flakk misiles. that single building can kill 2 FMC/ turn. Dont focus Gants unless your oponent is not using tervigons. If you are using IG get a couple of thudd cannons for horde.
Play your game, make him be on defensive instance from the first turn.

Noise Marines are the answer to most of your problems. They can handle some big guys with high str and low ap, instant kill zoanthropes (barring its 3+ invuln saves), venomthropes (no save), warriors/raveners/shrikes (no save) and everything less than them with blastmasters. Sonic blasters will let you gun line, ignore cover and will ap swathes of lesser creepy crawlies once they close. Slaanesh forbid you get into melee, they will strike at better init or on par with a great deal of whats in Tyranid the codex. Just make sure these guys are already set up before anything gets into range.

Flakk havocs are good if you anticipate loads of flyers (flakk), can still hurt MC (krak), and might help thin some hordes (frag). Between a few squads of Havocs with ML, a few squads with blastmasters, and maybe 1 or 2 with sonic blasters to hold the line and keep the tarpits away from your important things, I think you should fair alright. Maybe a sacrificial unit or two to help slow down tide of gaunts.

Be'lakor's psyker powers are good, as long as he can stay out of Shadows in the Warp and they don't have deathleaper or his assassin brood in play. Any combination of those will see a dramatic drop in his efficiency.

I don't like the idea of wasting Plague Marines tarpitting. MC don't care a bout 3+ armor, and a 5+FNP is a poor substitute. They might be able to finish a wounded MC or the like, but they cost way too much to be a tarpit. Use Plague Zombies or cultists with a Chaos Lord or Dark Apostle for this. If you can manage it, you will only need to take wounds on 4 point models not 24 point models.

I agree about the Plague Marines, it's a sad Big Bug that can't Smash past T5 and FNP (ST 10...) (and AP 2) so unless you can finish it, its a bad play. (and even Big Bugs are often fast enough to go first, so watch out)

Noise Marines have been my bane, consistently. My last game was about 3500 points of Nids vs 1500 pts of CSM. I managed to kill 2 Rhinos, 1 squad of Noise Marines, a forgefiend, and a Slaanesh-marked Lord. Meanwhile I took massive casualties, including losing my Warlord due to 3 Blastmasters scattering directly on top of him, after my opponent seized. Of course seeing a Lictor roll 3 6's on a 6+ cover save against 3 wounds was pretty awesome.

Yeah, a couple squads of noises will rip me up. A CSM buddy of mine likes to use a "rhi-noise-rous" tactic that works well for ablative mobile wounds. (10 noise marines, 2 with blast masters shooting from the rhino fire points. No other sonics in the unit to keep points lower)

Also remember that any upgraded griblies will actually do some damage if they make combat

The biggest threads are their FMC's. Autocannon havocs on a quadgun will do some punishment to them real fast, alternatively a hades-fiend could do well.

Ground wise, Noise marines with sonic weapons/blastmasters will absolutely murder tyranid ground forces. take rhinos with havoc launchers & warpflame to even further murder their units.

If you're going noise, consider a slaneesh sorc to up the str of their sonic weapons.

A 1500 list could look something like this:

Terminator Lord: MoS. [He's here to make noise marines troops and to shoot FMC with the quadgun]
Terminator Sorc: Staff, MoS, ML2, Familiar [Make sure you get sypmony on this dude. If you get it 1st roll, you can keep going because most of the slaneesh powers are pretty good IMO, or hope for endurance for relentless sonic weapons]

Noise Marines x15: 14x Sonic Blaster, Champion w/ BP,CCW, Bolter [Murders his hordes, can take down MC with volume of fire]
Noise Marines x10: 2x Blastmaster, Naked champion <-this x2 [Takes down his big bugs and venomthropes]
Cultists x20: Autoguns. [act as 20 ablative wounds for your lord on the quadgun]

Heldrake w/ Baleflamer It Heldrakes things! Usually to death!!!

Aegis w/ quadgun. [Shooting those pesky FMC]


That's about it honestly, mix and match as you choose

Step 1: Kill the Venomthropes
Step 2: Kill the HQ Synapse units
Step 3: Kill the other Synapse units
Step 4: Mop up anything that isn't overly bothered by a lack of Synapse

Alternatively, if they're running a MTO list:
Step 1: Kill the Venomthropes
Step 2: Kill the scoring units
Step 3: Keep your scoring units alive

Always focus fire Monstrous Creatures down, 2 half-dead Tyrants are a much bigger threat than one unhurt Tyrant.