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So I've got a game vs a nids player tomorrow at 1500 points from what I saw last week he runs
1 dakka fly rant
30 devoured gaunts
Tervigon
3-4 warriors with a big blast gun
3 hive guard
3 zoanthropes

In my entire csm collection I have
Atleast 70 cultists 35 of each type
3 x 7 man plague marines squads with 2 meltas
3 rhinos
4 Nurgle bikes with 2 flamers
5 Nurgle warp talons
5 terminators with a heavy flamer combi flamer 2 Chain Fists
A land raider
A defiler
2 predators one tri las the other dakka
A on foot sorceror a jump pack nurgle sorceror and a biker nurgle sorceror
Quite a few do chosen
I also have a converted nurgle biker lord
On the daemon side of things I have
A GuO
A changeling model which I use as a tzeench herald
20 horrors
10 plague bearers
And a few Nurgling Bases
Anyone got any suggestions what to take


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Forget to mention but I also have 6 of the dark vengance hell brutes

...this belongs in the army list section most likely.

Kind of. But he wants to know how to play those units too which could be considered a topic for the Tactics forum...

I played Daemon kin against nids a few days ago. What I learned is that mid units have specific uses, and you can sometimes counter those hard. Like rock paper scissors.

For example, rather than trying to out shoot my opponents termagaunts with my cultists, I charged into them with a small unit of Blood crushers. Took me two turns to wipe the unit of 23 haunts with 4 crushers, and my crushers only suffered a single wound in the process!

Another thing to remember is that certain nids are synaptic linchpins. If you take out a few key units, you can disrupt your opponents entire flank. My opponent left a single unit of warriors to cover the advance of their left side. Once I took care of those with a Forgefiend, that side lost a lot of its staying power.

Read up on tyranids if you can. Knowing your enemy is your first step to beating them.

For HQ, Nurgle bike lord seems to be a done deal. The flamers aren't my favorite pick, but against nids they'll do just fine. You have the models, so go with the Lord, Sorc, and bike retinue. Use em to hunt synapse creatures, and pressure the back line. Avoid the gaunt tarpit, but there slow, should be managable.

I would drop a squad of 3 termies with HF and 2 combi flamers into midfield. It's enough of a threat he has to deal with them.

Your troops are a mixed bag. In a low point game, I'd go with 2 squads of PM's, mainly because the poison means they can actually hurt MC's, they have defensive grenades, and str 3 is going to really struggle to do anything, so these guys are your point holders. Leave of the rhino's, I think they'll come to you pretty well.

If you can run your Defiler as an allied Soul Grinder, I would. Its just straight better. A loaded up GUO, a few PB's and a Nurgle Grinder would round out my list. Drop the Big Guy and some termies into there face, manuver the bikes around to surgically take advantage of the chaos the Drops cause, and sit back with the Grinder and the PM's and slowly advance and take points.

Key here is to target the Flyrant, and the Zoanthropes. Not much else can wound your GUO and do anything meaningful to your Lord. Get rid of these early and you become kinda invincible. Keep the sorc unmarked, roll on Biomancy to buff the bike squad.

Small alternative, use an unmarked Sorceror with a small cultist retinue in the backfield, use Crimson Slaughter to get divination, and prescience your grinder/defiler. Grinder can be good AA against the Flyrant. Or go with a Tzeentch Herald and some horrors, but then you run into HQ problems with the GUO. Both options, but against a Flyrant a prescience Grinder might be a good power play.

Target priority is the key to defeating nids. Know what's a threat, and what can be ignored.

I'm seeing a lot of synapse in this list, so it'll be difficult to force instinctive behaviour tests, barring some poor positioning.

A large amount of the firepower in this tyranid army is actually coming from the devourer gaunts. No one wants to have 90 S4 shots pointed at them.
Fortunately they are very easy to kill.
If they all have devourers, they won't want to be a tarpit, and will try to leave that to the lesser gaunts spawned by the tervigon. Get stuck in there.

The Flyrant is dangerous, and a high priority target. But bear in mind it's a bullet sponge once in the air. You might do more damage spending your shots on other things.
Remember to roll for mysterious objectives. Getting a skyfire nexus can be massive.
If you get first turn, then you can try to take it out while it's still on the ground. Most nid players will take a venomthrope to give it shrouding on turn 1, making this more difficult. But if there's no venomthrope, it's worth a shot.



Warriors have low damage output from shooting. If they are just sitting around firing off a S4 pie plate every turn you could almost ignore them.
If upgraded for close combat they can be powerful, but they are slow and get very expensive.
S8 weapons will devastate them either way.

Zoanthropes warp lance power is fairly unreliable. It can inflict a S10 hit on vehicles, but it has to make it through several dice rolls to get there.
The 3+ invul sounds impressive, but they are only T4 with 2 wounds. Just shoot them away with small arms.

The tervigon has a bunch of wounds, but doesn't really have much damage output. The termagants it spits out are basic fleshborer gaunts, so won't do much except hold objectives and tarpit.
Bonus if you can kill the tervigon while it's within 12" of any gaunt units. It will kill a bunch of them.

Hive guard are decent light vehicle hunters. S8 shots that ignore line of sight. They can be difficult to kill however. T6, and are probably hiding behind a wall.