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Heyo, so I play several armies and I frequently play against Tyrannids. With most my armies, I feel like I can get a balanced game in. However, with my marines (I've transitioned my marine army to a mostly primaris force, as far as infantry is concerned), I have trouble against hive guard. Their weapon profile is extremely well suited to quickly destroying primaris infantry. While being hidden away and free from reprisal (and often buffed with a minus one to hit), I have seen a 6 man squad of them kill a ten man squad of intercessors in one turn when using the double shoot stratagem. How do I get in an neutralize them? I've considered plasma inceptors, but to do serious damage to a full squad of hive guard, I'd need 6, and thats 350 points. On top of that, with the hive guard having a minus one to hit, I'd lose a lot of the inceptors to overcharge.

Thunderfire/Whirlwind/Scorpius? Not super familiar with the rules for them in 8th but against T5 4+ there should be something useful there.

I've considered the scorpious. If he remains stationary for the double shoot, he can mathammer average 2 dead hive guard. However, if deployment doesn't go my way or if I go second, the hiveguard could easily kill him in one go.

Honestly, Plasma Inceptors are your best bet.

If you want to counter the -1 to hit, bring a jump captain (counts as Primaris). If you're super adamant about Primaris only, bring the new Phobos Lieutenant, make him warlord and give him the trait that lets a unit nearby have +1 to hit.

As to the cost, while it's true that you're paying 350 pts to deal with them, if you don't they'll cost you at least that in losses. Also Hive Guard tend to be unguarded at the back, so there probably won't be much left to counterpunch your Plasma Inceptors, so they should survive to mess more stuff up in later turns.

Hive Guard can shoot anything in SM army that is not a Land Raider or not having a 3++ in one go If they are in the right Hive Fleet and using that shoot twice stratagem. I rate them as the 2nd highest threat to Space Marine, second only to Genestealer swarms.

Marines are so trash for their cost that you have to accept that Nidz out run, out-shoot, out-psychic and defintely out-fight Space Marines. Accept that there is nothing in SM that would "defintely work" against Nidz (include Hiveguards), then lets seek for something that "might work"

Lets see the strength of the Hiveguards first, imo Its greatest strength is it can shoot out of LoS and its gun is long range, So it will usually deploy behind LoS blocking terrains to avoid return fire. So deploy frontline firefight Squads are a waste against it. You will need either Deep Strike units like Inceptor or Vanguard Veterans, or really fast units like flyers (Storm Raven or Storm Talon). Remember, If Nidz have Venomthrope, shoot those dead first, by the Golden Throne, shoot them dead to not suffer the -1 to hit.

Among those suggestions, I think it is worth mention the Vanguard Veteran, the cheap Storm Shield on them make them really tough to shoot down. Give them some plasma pistol and some Thurnder Hammers, they can go toe to toe with Nidz melee monsters, and they will smash the Hiveguards with ease in combat.

anyone who thinks nidz outshoot marines hasn't been playing warhammer 40k with people who know how to play.

Nidz cannot outshoot anyone cept for mabey GSC. The hive guard are really our only good LR (hurr hurr 36") guns and they aren't even that good. We can kill 2 light vehicles a turn if they don't roll bad.

They park in ITC buildings and then your inceptors can't shoot them. You need melee or your own ignore LoS.

Wow. It's been ages since a saw a thread about how to deal with Tyranids. Brings a tear to the eye.

Consider the humble assault marine. It's not always about killing the problem unit. Just stop them shooting the rest of your army.
Give the Sergeant a power weapon of you really want to.

Martel, I don't see any indication that rooster92 is playing with ITC rules. Hopefully he doesn't have to put up with that kind of game breaking nonsense. ITC building rules are flat out bad for the game.

Just take them out with long range weapons if you aren't playing ITC. You can shoot them through windows and building slits.

I find ITC buildings improve the game overall.

We don't play with ITC rules, but we do play with a lot of solid line of sight blocking buildings with no gaps in them. So plenty of places to hide artillery. I don't have too much of a problem with artillery type units in general, as most my other armies either have a lot of fliers to get at em, artillery of their own, or enough bodies that the hive guard don't bother me. Primaris marines just in my opinion have that sweet spot profile that hive guard can chew up pretty well. I do have a couple of marine flyers, that probably could have done some good damage to the hive guard in our last game if I had made better choices. I got greedy turn one, and tried to play conservatively with my xiphon and stormtalon and use them to soften some of his front line units. The following turn I lost the stormtalon to general shooting, and the xiphon to the hiveguard themselves. Those were my only really speedy elements, and after that I had nothing to get to them in time.

2 damage weapons eat up primaris fast. They have to be destroyed asap when you see them. I don't like plasma inceptors, but you might have to work them in if this continues to be a problem.

I think I figured out a pretty decent hard counter to the hive guard. It will require splitting up my force org a bit, but I think it will work. Its cheesy, but if I break off some of my army into a dark angels patrol detachment, I can take a dark angels librarian, a dark angels scout squad (I was already taking two scout squads, and had more than 3 troops choices; I'll just make one of them dark angels, so this is no sacrifice), and then I can take a dark angels plasma interceptor squad. With the dark angels keyword, I can use weapons from the dark age strat and boost them to 3 damage. On average, mathammer says they should kill 4 hive guard, even with a minus one to hit. This will reduce them to a minor threat, even though the inceptors will likely self destruct.

rooster92 wrote:
I think I figured out a pretty decent hard counter to the hive guard. It will require splitting up my force org a bit, but I think it will work. Its cheesy, but if I break off some of my army into a dark angels patrol detachment, I can take a dark angels librarian, a dark angels scout squad (I was already taking two scout squads, and had more than 3 troops choices; I'll just make one of them dark angels, so this is no sacrifice), and then I can take a dark angels plasma interceptor squad. With the dark angels keyword, I can use weapons from the dark age strat and boost them to 3 damage. On average, mathammer says they should kill 4 hive guard, even with a minus one to hit. This will reduce them to a minor threat, even though the inceptors will likely self destruct.

That's a great solution. I'd forgotten that in a patrol detachment you can take things in addition to the basic "troop". I don't see this as "cheesy" at all, Eldar, Admech et al, all mix up their detachments to get the best "bang for the buck", hell Tryanids even mix hive fleets!

First, a general disclaimer about Tyranids. Tyranids are an unusual army with lots of odd rules and interactions that plays differently than most other armies in the game. Playing well with or against Tyranids requires a higher baseline knowledge of how the army functions than most others in the game.

Second, the poster above who said Tyranid shooting is bad is wrong, and should be ashamed. Tyranid shooting is quite good, but limited in that it is mostly short ranged high volume, and lacks many high S options.

On to the subject of Hive Guard in particular. The best way to neutralize Hive Guard is to touch them. Think of them as a light tank that degrades in an odd way. They are not great in combat, and don't have Fly to fall back with. Even a tac marine squad can lock them down for a few turns.

If you don't have a good way to assault them, you need to hit them with antitank weapons. Lascannons, plasma, melta. They are also reasonably vulnerable to autocannon style weapons due to not having a super high toughness. Hive Guard are also one of the few units that it is a good idea to kill half of two squads instead of all of one squad, because that limits the utility of the shoot twice stratagem.

Basically, whatever your plan is to kill IG armor you should use it against the Hive Guard.

It is also worth looking at exactly how he gets his Synapse and -1 to hit.

There are many options for Synapse, the most common being Neurothropes. Neurothropes are characters and have a 3++, so you are not going to be able to easily kill them, but you should pay attention because if your opponent makes a mistake and leaves the Hive Guard out of Synapse they will take a -1 to hit unless the target the nearest enemy unit. This is something you can take advantage of but not rely on happening.

For the -1 to hit he has two options, a Malenthrope or Venomthropes. The Malenthrope is a big tentacle faced Forgeworld monstrous creature. It is low enough wounds (9) that it gets character protection, and provides Synapse, but it has a short range on the -1 to hit ability (3"). The other option is Venomthropes. They are about half the cost of the Malenthrope, have longer range (6") but are frail and are not characters. Their range degrades to 3" if they go below 3 models. Note that the two -1 to hit abilities explicitly do not stack.

It is also worth checking which Hive Fleet he is running. The Fleets that are relevant to Hive Guard are Kronos, which permits him to reroll 1's to hit in shooting if the unit didn't move, and Jorgmdr, which gives him always in cover. You can expect Kronos, because it is better, but sometimes you see others because of a list design that prefers some other Hive Fleet.

So, after all of that, here is what to do. When he deploys, check if he is using a Malenthrope or Venomthropes.

If it is Venomthropes, shoot them with missile launchers until they are dead. Then shoot the Hive Guard with missiles until they are half dead. Then shoot the other unit of Hive Guard until they are half dead. If he is using a Malenthrope, skip the first part about shooting Venomthropes.

If you have a smash captain or similar drop CC threat, charge the Hive Guard.

If your list doesn't have the tools to do one of those two things, you don't have the tools to beat most of the solid lists in the game, and need to up your anti-tank abilities.

Note that I didn't say nid shooting was bad, but I did say they couldn't outshoot anyone other than GSC.

If you spam warriors, or gaunts, you can do great as a shooty list, but no one really does that competitively. We get 4 decent long range options to shoot with in the nid army (hive guard and Barbed Heirodule for high str, dakkafex and FHT for number of shots).

The hive guard only have a 42" threat range (36" if they stay in hiding) and are not really reliable damage. D3 for damage means you cant even reliably cripple a knight by shooting it twice.

Barbed Heirodules are complete dooky atm. Overpriced and unreliable BS4, cant even shoot twice, and still D3 dmg (+1 with a strat). They die to basically any kind of long ranged AT weaponry because 3+ save with no invun or FNP.

Dakkafex and FHT have the same problem. No AP and short range (granted FHT doesn't feel this as bad).


Tyranids can build a shooty army, but if they go up againgst any other dedicated shooty army they loose. Tyranids can also build an even better melee army (offence and mobility wise) but it you don't absolutely crush your opponent early on, you get tabled.


I have played tyranids competitively since the start of 8th and just recently gave up on them. They can do very good using the Warzone: Atlanta mission packs (I won a tourney with them almost perfect score), but are very lacking in almost every other setting. Orks/demons beat them in melee and marines/guard/tau/necrons murder them at range.

To make matters worse, the new GSC is also better at melee than nids, and can take so many hand flamers that guant spam has no chance againgst them.

I would give the Exocrine a mention but otherwise agree with your post.

I do bring a good amount of long ranged AT, (sicaran tank destroyer, contemptor with with two twin lascannons, xiphon interceptor) which works fine against other elements of his army. However, we play with plenty of LOS blocking terrain, and in almost any map we set up, each player will have one or two large LOS blocking pieces in or directly adjacent their deployment. He deploys the hive guard behind one of those pieces, usually towards the edge of deployment. While hive guard range is limited; if stationed on the edge of deployment, the 36 inch range usually provides coverage of at least one or two objectives, and/or an important choke point. This means to control objectives, I have to expose my infantry to heavy, cover ignoring fire. We often play with progressive scoring missions, so I have to either pick taking this fire and trying to control ground, or sitting in my deployment and killing things off, but then being way behind in points. For the minus one to hit and synapse, he usually nestles a malanthrope in there, and will have a direct fire support monster also within the bubble and poking out, to provide a fire base while genestealers, flyrants, ect. exert pressure on the line. It's a solid tactic

A cheap option for "touching" the hiveguard might be an eversor assassin. Wouldn't cause a ton of damage, but he has a moderately reliable charge from deepstrike, would shut them down for a turn, and would require him to have a unit or two shoot at him to get rid of him after.

babelfish wrote:

If you don't have a good way to assault them, you need to hit them with antitank weapons. Lascannons, plasma, melta. .

Which comes down to what deep striking at weapons you have. Or fast(flyers). Anything from your dz won't shoot unless tyranid player chooses to allow it

rooster92 wrote:
I do bring a good amount of long ranged AT, (sicaran tank destroyer, contemptor with with two twin lascannons, xiphon interceptor) which works fine against other elements of his army. However, we play with plenty of LOS blocking terrain, and in almost any map we set up, each player will have one or two large LOS blocking pieces in or directly adjacent their deployment. He deploys the hive guard behind one of those pieces, usually towards the edge of deployment. While hive guard range is limited; if stationed on the edge of deployment, the 36 inch range usually provides coverage of at least one or two objectives, and/or an important choke point. This means to control objectives, I have to expose my infantry to heavy, cover ignoring fire. We often play with progressive scoring missions, so I have to either pick taking this fire and trying to control ground, or sitting in my deployment and killing things off, but then being way behind in points. For the minus one to hit and synapse, he usually nestles a malanthrope in there, and will have a direct fire support monster also within the bubble and poking out, to provide a fire base while genestealers, flyrants, ect. exert pressure on the line. It's a solid tactic

A cheap option for "touching" the hiveguard might be an eversor assassin. Wouldn't cause a ton of damage, but he has a moderately reliable charge from deepstrike, would shut them down for a turn, and would require him to have a unit or two shoot at him to get rid of him after.

You may also consider Callidus Assassin, she can be deployed closer when come out of reserve. It is another kind of threat instead of mere charging benefits, it will makes enemy deploy his Hiveguards more conservatively to prevent she coming out closer than 9". This conservative will limit the usefulness of Hiveguards, just like your opponent using the Hiveguards to limit where your Marine going.