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Hi All,

I am a Hong Kong based Tyranid player and frequently play against a 2000 - 2500pt ultramarine spam list. I have only been playing for a year and have already amassed a significant army, wonderfully painted and very versatile. Without going into too much detail, I have multiple MCs, FMCs and Elites and 200+ gribblies. I am spoiled for choice, but continually find my lists cannot do the damage output to reduce numbers or move fast enough to claim points. We play both standard and maelstrom missions, and I have yet to win. Obviously, I am a novice and have an enormous amount to learn. Hence my post.

The player uses:

2000pts
40 scouts (20 snipers/20 melee)
60 tac marines (bolters + 1 melta per squad) with rhinos
HQ tellion.
Imperial Knight w/ Chain fist

The strategy he uses is to infiltrate and scout all/most of his scouts and charge me on turn 2 tarpitting many units. He advances his knight and charges my MCs with the intention of destroying it, his own scouts, and devastating my front line. The marines hang back behind clever rhino positioning, funneling attacking units and giving rear scouts a bottleneck to rend MCs.

My most recent list against him included:
CAD1
2x FHT w/ TLD
2x Venomthropes
2x DS rippers
2x Exocrine
2x HC
CAD2
1xFHT w/TLD
2x Zoans
2x rippers
2x AG CC Carnis

In my most recent loss. He advanced his entire army so that his melee scouts were 6 inches away from my front line all 6 rhinos went flat out, and his IK was 12 inches from my line. This was unlike him, and I sensed he was being charitable owing to my win rate. One carnifex was able to crush his knight in turn one. The Flyrants and Crones killed 20 scouts and destroyed 2 rhinos. Turn 2 both carnies died to shooting and charges and the flyrants took heavy dmg. My shooting was largely ineffective as I moved my FMC unit away from skyfire. He moved his rhinos to secure objectives and his marines brought down my rippers. In my turn, I devastated his marines with 3 lucky psychic screams. However, The exocrines, holding objectives in the rear, with no other viable targets, did very little to the scouts that occupied the central VP. Turns 3 - 5 involved me shooting and killing 30 marines. But 20 still remained with 15 scouts and 3 rhinos and my though my Flyrants and Exos were still alive, they were unable to award me the win.

I appreciate this post begs multiple questions about my positioning, target choice, psychic phase; maelstrom draws; strategic and other tactical choices. So, what I am looking for is general concepts that I may be failing to understand; list proposals and strategies; and perhaps an insight into the weakness of my particular army (and his!) from a tyranid 7th ed. perspective.

Thanks very much in advance for any advice.

Well....Hmm.

The problem is that your 'best' unit is the flying hive tyrant - but whilst it's fast, shooty and tough, It's not great at shooting armoured infantry out of cover and it's not great at claiming objectives. Plus, it's expensive.

The problem I see is this: Massed marines with objective secured don't actually have to kill you to win. They can move up, take objectives, dig in on them and then use rhinos, scouts, etc to slow you up and just 'farm' victory points off the objectives - unless you can wipe them out to the last man you can't take the objectives off them.

You have two ways to respond to this: up your army's lethality (in the hopes of shooting him off the objectives faster) or take more objective secured units (which can actually contest objectives with a marine tactical squad).

I'm not sure option 1 will work. If massed winged hive tyrants and exocrines aren't providing the firepower you need, you don't have much you can escalate to.

The best suggestion I have is to try and bypass his main trick - the wall of rhinos and scouts. Do you have access to tyrannocytes? Drop pods are a nice trick for marines and it's no less impressive for tyranids. A Tyrannocyte with a Tyrannofex in it, for example, with an Acid Spray and a thorax swarm of some kind, can land right in his back field and probably wipe out a sniper squad in one turn. It allows you to react to his deployment, quickly - if he tries to move up and attack your deployed units, he creates a gap between the scouts and the tactical marines on objectives - into which you can drop dakkafex, big units of devourer-armed gaunts, tyranid warriors, zoanthropes and so on.

Also - do you have access to the Leviathan Rising dataslates? The first one has a formation called Deathleaper's Assassin Brood - Deathleaper and 5 (solo) lictors. These guys are nice in maelstrom because they pop up without scatter, allowing lone lictors to suddenly appear and ninja unoccupied objectives, or for a whole bunch of them to pop up and flesh hook a tank's rear armour. More importantly, they apply a -1LD penalty to anyone nearby - paired up with Deathleaper's Its After Me rule to neutralise a high Ld HQ character, and the Psychic Scream nova suddenly becomes a lot more useful.


I reckon you could fit the Assassin Brood, a Skyblight Swarm (gargoyles and winged monsters - deep striking, respawning, objective secured units!) and a minimum 2-hive-tyrants-and-2-ripper-broods CAD in 2000 points.

If you get as much stuff as you can deep striking or in the air, he can't block you off. Add in plenty of objective secured and you should (!) be able to contest objectives enough to keep his VP score under control until the big boys can wipe out enough of his models.

Is there a second HQ? Not sure how he's getting objective secured and 10 troop choices without a second CAD.

Admittedly, that is a lot of marine bodies... Hard to chew through a marine horde.

Somebody is having issues with Tactical Marines? REALLY?

What you need is Mawlocs. At the point level you're playing you can bring them and mulch the Tactical Squads usually in one go.

Thanks for your responses.

Firstly, I am new to Dakka Dakka, and online forums, and not 100% sure how to reply. I hope this 'quick reply' is the appropriate method.

Locarno24, thank you for you lengthy post. I do in fact have 3 Tyrannocytes. But I have had trouble accounting for them in lists. I have used them to great effect against the same player's Demon spam army (yes, the player has a theme to his lists). I have not tried them on Marinespam.
Are there any particular synergies that have worked for you? I love the idea of dropping Tfexs, but I have found that the opponent's aggressive play style means that acid spray and dessicator larvae come into play turn one anyway. My further reticence with drop play has revolved around overall cost, synapse tax and positioning: I am reluctant to expose my advancing FHT to that much marine fire on turn 2, and podding a zoanthrope/warriors is committing an awfully large number of points to the attack. However, I love my tyrannocytes and would really like to see them on the board more. I will have a think about a suitable list for this saturday's game.
As to your second suggestion about the DLA I do indeed have the black library slates and the said host of lictors and DL himself. But again, I have blanched at the 380 price tag after seeing them not really live up to their promise. However, in the past I have brought them with mawlocs to unlock that awesome chameleonic skin synergy, only to have both mawloc and lictor suffer a bit of bad favour from the dice gods (total anhiliation). My concern with DLA in the rear suggestion is that the opponent treats his scouts and rhinos as canon fodder using them to preserve his marines. I can see the lictors arrive kill some scouts but then be exposed to krak genades and mass rapid fire. Any strategy must deal in part with the rhinos etc, but in truth hunt down and slaughter the marine masses. Getting both FHT and DL into range for a successful Psychic shriek, however, is a beautiful suggestion. I'll play around with that idea.
With regards to the skyblight formation. I was inspired by the formation and have fielded it only once versus a chaos player. It was a tad lack lustre in that game and left me a little disappointed. No units came back and I found it hard to utlise the harpies set of rules. Suffice it to say the airborne creatures survived and dealt out a solid amout of dmg but they did not secure the win. The Str6 ap4 flamer on the HC is invaluable for flushing out scouts, but again, the marines remain a problem.
Again, I have not tried Skyblight against his spam list. So, i'll give it a go. Toxin sacs on the gargoyles?
I was also thinking of spamming sporefields. Those infiltrating str8 ap3 blasts would put a stop to reckless advancing.
Thanks for your suggestions!



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hi Crazyterran,

yes, I actually wondered the same. I will call him on that next time. I will try to come back and record his response, it may well be insightful, if not completely truthful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hi Slayer-fan 123,

I admire your bravado! But the issue is not tactical marines per se. It is the combination of 60 tac marines, 40 scouts and an IK.

Thanks for the suggestion about mawlocs. Are you running all 3? Jy2 style with bastion, lictors and mucos or do you have your own style of play?

How do you get around the probability reserve rolls? And what about mishaps? Or simply missing the target. Perhaps the dice gods favour you, but with me, I am the sort of player that needs some degree of certainty (or near enough, like twinlinked weapons) with my strategies otherwise their failure effects my morale poorly. Mawlocs have quite a large margin for error. To depend on them to counter 60 tac marines.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Is there a second HQ? Not sure how he's getting objective secured and 10 troop choices without a second CAD.

Admittedly, that is a lot of marine bodies... Hard to chew through a marine horde.

I believe his opponent is using the new 10th company formation while put Telion in the CAD. Before 7th he would just take two Scout squad and four Tac squads even in 2000, but fill up the rest with Devastator and / or Assault Marines and land speeders. While a allied IK is defintely a must for him in higher points game.

As another major Ultramarine player in the same club, though I don't take his route since I feel it is just too dry and mono style, I really appreciate the brutal efficent such type of Marine can bring on the table to win a game. With rending, they don't lack offensive power as well, a side note in my experience of me is at 1250pts, even a full half of Necron Destroyer Cult can be destroyed by them in just two turns of fire fight.

As for ideas for Iponimous. The key problem is to prevent the opponent getting to objective uncontested, so it is suggested to pop open those rhinos asap. Flyrants, Hve Guards are both good at this job. If you are running for objective, how about a endless swarm? I know they had do good for you before when combined with Trygon prime. So bring that formation back maybe a good idea, a bonus if you let them ride in Tyranitco. Meanwhile for your offenses, bring more pieplate. Something like Mawloc or living artiliery maybe ok for you, even you don't destroyed those marines out right you may still pinned those guys on ground thus preventing them from going for objective.

Hi Neophyte2012,

Thanks for the suggestions. I still feel that I can deal with mass marines, or mass scouts or an imperial knight. But when they are massed together, they are surprisingly lethal.

As for your advice about Mawlocs. Well, I believe it was against you that your centurions killed all three with but a single wound taken. Since then, I have been a little shy about mawlocs.

I also like the hive guard and have been toying with the idea. But is their volume of fire enough?

Popping rhinos with FHT makes me sad. 240pt vs 35pts. Even if I unleash all 720 pts of fire, that is still only 3 rhinos dead. I agree the mobility needs dealing with. But by the end of the first turn, the opponent has moved 18inches and is all but ready to deploy all the marines already.
Endless swarm has potential, but again, I refer you to our game where you Skyhammered my frontline with flamers. And then I failed the +4. The squad that did return was so far from the battle that it was meaningless. In subsequent games with Iapedus, I had a similar experience.
Trygon holes are good, but expensive for turn 3 troop shooting. Remember, the trygon arrives, then, next turn troops can arrive.
LAN is ok, but the damage output is insignificant vs so much +3. Biovores can kill scouts, but the marines are more resilient. And though the exocrine in the LAN has the potential to be lethal against IKs, a good opponent will out manoeuvre the 24in range. Or charge the exocrine with scouts in turn 2.

Hey, Man that marine list is really brutal. People really underestimate the power of mass marines. It would only be worst imo if instead of rhinos he used drop pods here.

This is a really tough matchup as in order to contest his large numbers, you need to mass troops, but to do so your allowing his boltguns to have a hay day!

I think the Leviathan formations as people have mentioned might be a good answer here. personally I find dakka FHT to be underwhelming.. they are decent, but only if I roll the right psychic abilities for them.

Something I might try... Subterranean formation, You essentially get a trygon some mawlocs and units that can do some damage to rear armor with ravenors.

Another strategy could be running a CAD with 2 or 3 trygons and maybe 2 or 3 endless swarms with minimum squads. You want minimum squads to make sure that they die quick so they come back next turn!

The artillery node is quite good and would be really good against any blobs of marines on objectives. Even the similar formation that is all CC carnifex with d3+1 hammer of wraths would be really good against all the armor.

Essentially look at the combos you can produce out of your special rules. Thats the only strength Tyranids have right now against these updated codices.