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Got a game coming up against a 3 flying have tyrant army at 1850pts. The nids also have lictors, mawlocks and genestealers but it is the flyrans I have problems with.

My eldar involves bikes, a unit of scythe guard, a WK, lots of spiders and a hemlock. Its my all comers list and I don't want to tailor to the nids.

The issue I've had with flyrants in the past is that I have no skyfire and thus can't effectively kill them and they are fast enough to catch my fragile units and rip them to pieces with impunity. I can't think of any way to stop this and think that games against this sort of list are always going to be an uphill battle. Any ideas?

Serpents would definitely help.

Reapers also work wonders, with their ignoring jink and the re-roll against flyers. You can fire the swarm for hits and a little harder to wound or hope you get lucky and get a couple hits with the starshot missiles and take out the flyrants. Of course reapers are expensive at 350+ points for a full squad.

I had a game against 5 flyrants a couple of weeks ago. I also brought my all comers list, but mine is different than yours so that won't help you much, but I can say how each unit did in the fight.

Farseer w/Spear + Stone

5 Scatter Bikes
3 Scatter Bikes
3 Scatter Bikes

Wraithknight

Wraithguard w/D-Scythes

Crimson Death Formation

5-6 Dark Reapers + Exarch in
Bunker w/Ammo storage + Comms Relay

Writing the list from my head, but I think that was the least.

Reapers in bunker is ok, if you are not running stuff in reserve then get an icarus lascannon. Exarch can shoot the icarus twice, has reroll to hit against flying (and skyfire on icarus), is AP2 and ignores jink. So most turns he alone is putting 2 wounds in a flyrant. Then if the rest of the reapers gets in a shot or two, not too hard when you can reroll to hit, then he can't jink or armor save against those either. Flyrants can't harm a bunker as it's AV14 eitger.

Crimson Death formation was crazy amazing. I didn't lose a single crimson hunter to 5 hive tyrants, it was crazy. Being able to reroll jink save is so good, and because of vector dancer you can position yourself so that the hive tyrants can't always fire at your planes (they got a 360 arc, but only 18 range and one 90degree turn).>

Guided Wraithknight will hit a tyrant every other turn on average. I got lucky and killed 1 hive tyrant in turn one with the WK. The hive tyrants start on the ground in turn one (!), and since I started my turn first, WK could fire at full BS. Hive Tyrants was rocking a 2+ cover because they were standing in ruins with that tyranid that grants shrouded around him (venomthrope?), but I rolled a 6 so he got no saves.

I put all my bikes and farseer in reserve, so they couldn't be targeted by hive tyrants and mawlocs. As soon as the bikes arrived, they got blasted down by mawlocs. I always put the bikes in the corner and spaced them exactly 2", which hepled, because he scattered off the tabe and lost one mawloc to that. I put the bike unit with the farseer on top of the bunker, which as two levels, and the mawloc could not target them there.

Hope this was of any help!

 wuestenfux wrote:
Serpents would definitely help.

Meh, I have one (scythe guard are in it) but the loss of laser lock hurt them and the shield has no AP so doesn't matter that it ignores the flyrants jinks


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kaela_Mensha_Khaine wrote:
Reapers also work wonders, with their ignoring jink and the re-roll against flyers. You can fire the swarm for hits and a little harder to wound or hope you get lucky and get a couple hits with the starshot missiles and take out the flyrants. Of course reapers are expensive at 350+ points for a full squad.

The issue I have with them is paying that much for something which doesn't have the full skyfire rule, they also don't work well with the rest of my speedy army and I fear the nid player would just blast them away first chance he got!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Acidian wrote:
I had a game against 5 flyrants a couple of weeks ago. I also brought my all comers list, but mine is different than yours so that won't help you much, but I can say how each unit did in the fight.

Farseer w/Spear + Stone

5 Scatter Bikes
3 Scatter Bikes
3 Scatter Bikes

Wraithknight

Wraithguard w/D-Scythes

Crimson Death Formation

5-6 Dark Reapers + Exarch in
Bunker w/Ammo storage + Comms Relay

Writing the list from my head, but I think that was the least.

Reapers in bunker is ok, if you are not running stuff in reserve then get an icarus lascannon. Exarch can shoot the icarus twice, has reroll to hit against flying (and skyfire on icarus), is AP2 and ignores jink. So most turns he alone is putting 2 wounds in a flyrant. Then if the rest of the reapers gets in a shot or two, not too hard when you can reroll to hit, then he can't jink or armor save against those either. Flyrants can't harm a bunker as it's AV14 eitger.

Crimson Death formation was crazy amazing. I didn't lose a single crimson hunter to 5 hive tyrants, it was crazy. Being able to reroll jink save is so good, and because of vector dancer you can position yourself so that the hive tyrants can't always fire at your planes (they got a 360 arc, but only 18 range and one 90degree turn).>

Guided Wraithknight will hit a tyrant every other turn on average. I got lucky and killed 1 hive tyrant in turn one with the WK. The hive tyrants start on the ground in turn one (!), and since I started my turn first, WK could fire at full BS. Hive Tyrants was rocking a 2+ cover because they were standing in ruins with that tyranid that grants shrouded around him (venomthrope?), but I rolled a 6 so he got no saves.

I put all my bikes and farseer in reserve, so they couldn't be targeted by hive tyrants and mawlocs. As soon as the bikes arrived, they got blasted down by mawlocs. I always put the bikes in the corner and spaced them exactly 2", which hepled, because he scattered off the tabe and lost one mawloc to that. I put the bike unit with the farseer on top of the bunker, which as two levels, and the mawloc could not target them there.

Hope this was of any help!

Great detail - thank you!

I have actually played this guy before with a similar list with a crimson death formation - I also didn't loose a single hunter but I found that when they came on turn 2 the 3 flyrants had already done the damage and killed most of my bikes and the wave serpent/farseer. I took that list to a tournament and found I didnt like having so many points off the table in the crimson death so I got rid of it for more bikes and war walkers. I think I need to be savvy about my reserve choices though - you are right there.

For the WK I always think he has better targets on the ground he is more sure to hurt but I will fire him skyward if I run out of that.

Your hemlock is actually pretty awesome against hive tyrants. You can psychic shriek them at -2 ld and they get no cover/armor. Then you can use your D-Blast, even when they are flying, which ignores cover/armor/fnp, and on a 6 just removes the model entirely.

Your bikes are also great against hive tyrants, especially if you have guide. The only problem with bikes is that they get murderfaced by mawloc, but if you space them well then it is possible to set them up so you can only lose 2 bikes per mawloc. Hard to do with large groups of bikes though.

wuestenfux wrote:Serpents would definitely help.

Do they? A scatter laser serpent averages 0.4 of a wound. If you fire the shield. Hardly helping. There's much better solutions.

Acidian wrote:Your hemlock is actually pretty awesome against hive tyrants. You can psychic shriek them at -2 ld and they get no cover/armor. Then you can use your D-Blast, even when they are flying, which ignores cover/armor/fnp, and on a 6 just removes the model entirely.

Your bikes are also great against hive tyrants, especially if you have guide. The only problem with bikes is that they get murderfaced by mawloc, but if you space them well then it is possible to set them up so you can only lose 2 bikes per mawloc. Hard to do with large groups of bikes though.

Shriek is going to be denied by a tyrant on 4+. The d-blast thing i'd not thought of... That's actually a really good solution.

Reapers will do the job. They can cause a bunch of wounds. The only downside is that they do not make him jink. So the flyrants damage output isn't reduced until it's dead.

I like scatterbikes with guide/doom. Just cause a bunch of wounds. 6 bikes with the powers cast, averages 1.83 wounds.

I recently got lucky against tyrands and have my swooping hawks cause a grounding test with their interceptor rule. It's really unlikely (as in 1/100 chance) but he failed it, and it went down. It then got murdered with dakkabikes.

 Acidian wrote:
Your hemlock is actually pretty awesome against hive tyrants. You can psychic shriek them at -2 ld and they get no cover/armor. Then you can use your D-Blast, even when they are flying, which ignores cover/armor/fnp, and on a 6 just removes the model entirely.

Your bikes are also great against hive tyrants, especially if you have guide. The only problem with bikes is that they get murderfaced by mawloc, but if you space them well then it is possible to set them up so you can only lose 2 bikes per mawloc. Hard to do with large groups of bikes though.

I run small bike squads so I should be able to space if I am careful!

The hemlock is good but not that good! As far as i can tell the -2 from the mindshock is only for moral, pinning and fear and not for leadership (which makes me sad) and the blast doesn't ignore cover and has the same -1 modifier as the scythes and so can't role the 6 :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Belly wrote:

Acidian wrote:Your hemlock is actually pretty awesome against hive tyrants. You can psychic shriek them at -2 ld and they get no cover/armor. Then you can use your D-Blast, even when they are flying, which ignores cover/armor/fnp, and on a 6 just removes the model entirely.

Your bikes are also great against hive tyrants, especially if you have guide. The only problem with bikes is that they get murderfaced by mawloc, but if you space them well then it is possible to set them up so you can only lose 2 bikes per mawloc. Hard to do with large groups of bikes though.

Shriek is going to be denied by a tyrant on 4+. The d-blast thing i'd not thought of... That's actually a really good solution.

Reapers will do the job. They can cause a bunch of wounds. The only downside is that they do not make him jink. So the flyrants damage output isn't reduced until it's dead.

I like scatterbikes with guide/doom. Just cause a bunch of wounds. 6 bikes with the powers cast, averages 1.83 wounds.

I recently got lucky against tyrands and have my swooping hawks cause a grounding test with their interceptor rule. It's really unlikely (as in 1/100 chance) but he failed it, and it went down. It then got murdered with dakkabikes.

I think it only denies on a 5+ as they are both ML 2 so can be viable.

I think if there were just 1 then scater bikes would be fine but with 3 I find that I loose the shootout before they do!

 Zippokovich wrote:

I run small bike squads so I should be able to space if I am careful!

The hemlock is good but not that good! As far as i can tell the -2 from the mindshock is only for moral, pinning and fear and not for leadership (which makes me sad) and the blast doesn't ignore cover and has the same -1 modifier as the scythes and so can't role the 6 :(

Oops, my bad, I thought the mindshock pod was -2 on ld. I thought the blast didn't have the scythe rule, nor sure why I thought it would have ignore cover though, I was on my way home after a night shift when I wrote that so I will blame it on lack of sleep. Being able to force him to jink isn't that bad though.

Isn't shriek denied on a 5+? Both are ML2, tyrant has no adamantium will? Doom will also be denied on a 5+, but farseer rerolls makes it easier to get more warp charges.