Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Does anybody have any advice on beating Tyranids using Chaos space marines? (1500 points)
My opponent is going for several of the monstrous creatures (flying hive tyrant, carnifex, tyranofex, crone) backed by termagents, ripper swarms and tyranid broods.

Are you in troble with TMCs? Consider using DP with Blackmace, it would just butcher most MCs that is not a Swarmlord very fast.

Plasma usually does the trick. Chosen infiltrating into rapidfire range thanks to huron/ahriman should drop 1 a turn, pay 10 extra points for draznitch's ravagers out of crimson slaughter for prefered enemy to re-roll those 1's.

A heldrake or 2 should be enough to scare a flyrant, cause d3 str 7 ap2 vector strikes is rough when you've only got 4 wounds. Then use their baleflamers against the chumps huddling together in ruins or other cover.

Oblits have twin linked plasma guns as well as twin linked meltas, lascannons and assault cannons, more than enough for pew-pewing all kinds of threats at all kinds of ranges.

The bog standard bolter on marines should be enough to clear out the little gribblies, though missile launchers or dual hades forgefiends are advised against tyranid warriors.

But yeah, all plasma all the time. Double points if you take a crimson slaughter sorceror with the balestar and roll ignores cover and cram him in with the chosen.

Heldrakes do not scare Flyrants. Not even slightly. Any decent Nid player will not be in Vector Strike range when it arrives and will be behind it the following turn to shoot its wings off.

Plasma does work very well. Havocs can take Plasma guns. No need to waste points on Chosen for no benefit. That preferred enemy upgrade or just take Havocs. And I'd say Havocs are better because the Black Mace is really a good choice to have so no Crimson Slaughter options.

The Crone means avoid vehicles and Cultists.

Plague Marines are annoying to deal with though. T5 FNP is a good platform that's tough to move, and things like the Carnifex usually avoid them. Poisoned is, well, poison to TMCs. Skip out on standard troops and just run Plagues with Plasma for your Troop choices. A cheap Nurgle Lord isn't hard to fit into a list to make them your troops.

Try to take control of the table. Tyranids are really good at being everywhere, but they aren't good at forcing your models to stop being there. With the exception of the Mawloc, most Nids either don't have the killing power to clear models off in a good sweep or they are too busy doing their job of killing to stop and capture the objective. If you got some tough models to shift, you can plant yourself there and weather the storm.

Umm, what? When I play my 5 Flyrant list against my friend's CMS/Daemons army, the only thing I'm TERRIFIED of it his Heldrakes/FMC Daemons.

D3 Vectors that wound on 3's and ignore my jink and armor is the scariest thing they have in their army (anti-air-wise).

I can't get Catalyst on all 5 of my Flyrants, most of the time at least, and he simply vector strikes that Flyrant 2-3 times and it dies. Yes, getting that many vector strikes on 1 flyrant is a lot and requires a lot of planning on his part, but on average he kills a Flyrant a turn in my movement phase.

The CSM player can also bank on vectoring multiple FMCs and causing a grounding check in the movement phase, cast psychic witchfires from their FMCs, causing a grounding check in the psychic phase, and if it hasn't been grounded yet, snapfire some oblits into them with twinlinked plasma/melta for a 3rd grounding check. Followed by any assaults on grounded FMCs.

Heldrakes usually start this process by squeezing in a single wound on 1-2 flyrants. But with focused Vectors, they usually eat up a flyrant a turn.

As for vector ranges, it's 36-inch range and the fact that only a tip of one of its wing need to fly over a piece of your base/body makes it almost impossible to avoid. It can also go flat out to avoid the counter attack on his rear armor. Vectors strikes is all they need to do to take apart your Flyrants. You can't really bank on your positioning to avoid Heldrakes, they are simply faster than our Flyrants. If you spend your turn avoiding his arcs, you give up board positioning and he's dictating you on your own movement phase. He's winning at that point.

Just my 2 cents. Heldrakes are great models, despite that "nerf" on the bale flamer some time ago.

Oblits are great against Nids too. 1-2 models per unit, deep striking anywhere, with any weapon type they need for the turn. I'm really jealous of those models. The definitely of cookie-cutter. As nids, we don't pack too much AP1/2 in our lists, so they can be hard to remove, especially with 5++, 2 wounds and Toughness 5.

I'm grateful for the replies.
It looks like I'll be using a flying Daemon prince with the black mace
Nurgle Lord on bike plus small squad with plasma
2 x 5 man plague marine units with double plasma in Rhinos
Helldrake
Obliterators
Havocs in Rhino with plasma
Probably won't have many points left after that


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pretty much the above comes in at 1350 points, which also includes mark of Tzeentch on the Prince.
Suggestions for the last 150 points? I haven't put marks on either the bikes or the obliterators, Nurgle on both?
Or some cheap cultists for back field objective holding, not a lot of bodies in this force otherwise

 SharkoutofWata wrote:
Heldrakes do not scare Flyrants. Not even slightly. Any decent Nid player will not be in Vector Strike range when it arrives and will be behind it the following turn to shoot its wings off.

Plasma does work very well. Havocs can take Plasma guns. No need to waste points on Chosen for no benefit. That preferred enemy upgrade or just take Havocs. And I'd say Havocs are better because the Black Mace is really a good choice to have so no Crimson Slaughter options.

The Crone means avoid vehicles and Cultists.

Plague Marines are annoying to deal with though. T5 FNP is a good platform that's tough to move, and things like the Carnifex usually avoid them. Poisoned is, well, poison to TMCs. Skip out on standard troops and just run Plagues with Plasma for your Troop choices. A cheap Nurgle Lord isn't hard to fit into a list to make them your troops.

Try to take control of the table. Tyranids are really good at being everywhere, but they aren't good at forcing your models to stop being there. With the exception of the Mawloc, most Nids either don't have the killing power to clear models off in a good sweep or they are too busy doing their job of killing to stop and capture the objective. If you got some tough models to shift, you can plant yourself there and weather the storm.

Heldrakes dictate board control against flyrants big time. If the CSM player can force you to land or to try and avoid being in range to be vector struck, you're camping the back board edge and since you've got 18" range on your guns, I'll happily pay that.

You take Chosen because havoks are heavvy support and your heavy support should have 3 units of obliterators in there.

@ Huron, if you've got ~150 points left and what appears to be only 2 heavy support slots, may I suggest another unit of 2x oblits for 140. 152 with MoN, and why wouldn't you? If you can find another 30 points though, a 2nd heldrake wouldn't go astray instead if you've got one.

I don't (yet) own a second Heldrake but the second unit of Obliterators is possible.

A quick update, lost my game 9-7 which I was happy with. The army for the most part worked well, my own mistake was not using the Daemon prince to its best and therefore kinda wasting the points I spent on it.
Plague marines were great, one survived to the end of the game against two monstrous creatures.
Rapid firing Plasmas were perfect