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So I have a game coming up this weekend against a 'nids list, and we are not supposed to tweak our lists at this point, so that's out, but I'm still a little on the fence as how to play it. Never actually played anyone with nids before. I have:

Unfortunately, I can't post my list with my current phone. But long story very short: 1 Trajann, 1 SC with terminator and axe, big squad of allarus. 3x 3 shield and sword guardians, 1 flag with extra attack, the rest are bikes.

I think the bikes can thin out the chaff fairly easily, and the Terminators will be on the board turn 1, with the guardians. I'll let them run off and grab objectives, hunt targets of opportunity. I have no heavy support, but the bikes can charge anything t8 of more then 11 wounds. Is there anything I should keep an eye out for, or stay away from? I'm legit going in blind here. I've played against Nids in a small 500PT game with Scions back in 8th, but that was wildly different.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thank you.

What is he playing? Hard to tell you how to help if I don't know the basic's of what he is playing.

Nids can do large swarms, can do MC spam, can have lots of shooting or no shooting. Can also do the movement route or the tanky route.

Nids come in 5 flavours. They can be 'pure' or in a combination.

One has a lot of HiveTyrant with wings. They have a) excelent anti melle shots (24 S6) or they have melee attacks. They can cast 2 psykick powers. They have falled out of flavour.

Second has Swarmlord launching kraken genstealers across the board turn one and two. Kill genestealers ASAP. They have fallen out of flavour.

Third is a 'gaunt carpet' type of list. They will very rarly have any killing power, but you have a hard time keeping all of the bodies of objectives.

Fourth is a kronos 'gunline'. Kronos re-roll 1's to hit. Hiveguards hav 36" range S8 2 shots do not need line of sight. Exoshrines have 6 S7 shots, 2D, can shoot twice. Tyranofexes are worse Exosrines.

Fifth will use the special stratagems that can be used twice each battle or once each turn on spesific units. Most likly you will see Hiveguards shooting twice. Or warrios that ignore AP 1 and 2 and that reduses damage by 1, quite anoying on 3 wound models.

Lastly nids will have planed out secondery objectives in their list building. The lictor 'assassin' will be like a janitor that pops up and do actions or behind enemy lines etc.

Unless something goes horrible wrong for you the nid player will be focused on doing objectives. Outside of a swiss army knife of tricks nids can not do anything very good, and they models die very easaly.

 Niiai wrote:
Nids come in 5 flavours. They can be 'pure' or in a combination.

One has a lot of HiveTyrant with wings. They have a) excelent anti melle shots (24 S6) or they have melee attacks. They can cast 2 psykick powers. They have falled out of flavour.

Second has Swarmlord launching kraken genstealers across the board turn one and two. Kill genestealers ASAP. They have fallen out of flavour.

Third is a 'gaunt carpet' type of list. They will very rarly have any killing power, but you have a hard time keeping all of the bodies of objectives.

Fourth is a kronos 'gunline'. Kronos re-roll 1's to hit. Hiveguards hav 36" range S8 2 shots do not need line of sight. Exoshrines have 6 S7 shots, 2D, can shoot twice. Tyranofexes are worse Exosrines.

Fifth will use the special stratagems that can be used twice each battle or once each turn on spesific units. Most likly you will see Hiveguards shooting twice. Or warrios that ignore AP 1 and 2 and that reduses damage by 1, quite anoying on 3 wound models.

Lastly nids will have planed out secondery objectives in their list building. The lictor 'assassin' will be like a janitor that pops up and do actions or behind enemy lines etc.

Unless something goes horrible wrong for you the nid player will be focused on doing objectives. Outside of a swiss army knife of tricks nids can not do anything very good, and they models die very easaly.

What about the 18 Zoanthropes smite train plus the Kronos Hiveguard + 2 Exocrines gunline plus a 40 Genstealer rush?

That would be a mix of two and four. Why anyone would take 40 15 points genestealers with T4 5++ is beyond me.

The last time I played with my Custodes agaisnt Nids he blasted more than half of my army with pure mortal wounds with 2 zoantropes and 6 neurotropes.

I ended up winning the game with Trajan valoris alive with 2 wound, a Achillus Dreadnought alive with 4, and a vexilla with 4 wounds. He ended up with only 10 hormagaunts in the other extreme of the table.

The most relevant thing was when my 3 aquilon terminators with flamers deepstriked in the middle of his force and procedded to kill 60 termagants, 6 Tyranid Warriors and the last one was able to kill the Tyranid Tyrant before dying.

About Zoantropes and Neurotropes, have care. Their 3++ mean that in meele if he has a couple good rolls he can bog down your units. Is better to just saturate them with fire and kill them.

I thibk you are mixing the name of the two. Neoronthrope is the character. Zoanthropes is the elite choise.

Yes, probably!

 Niiai wrote:
That would be a mix of two and four. Why anyone would take 40 15 points genestealers with T4 5++ is beyond me.

The 1st turn charge of supersonic Genestealer hordes may not aims to actually kill all your important units. Alternatively, it could just be board control units and road blocks. If they failed to kill your 1st rank units, they could just block your army's movement, delaying your movement on to the objective you want. If they success in killing, even better, use fight again stratagem to consolidate into your 2nd rank units to jam them, denying your movement even further.

By then you are already on your back foot. Cleaning out hordes of T4 5++ and even 5+++ is easier in said than done. If you dedicate your firepower cleaning 40 such bodies, you will get smitey smite and shooty shoot by a bunch of Zoanthropes and a dozen Hiveguards and other big gun bugs. By the time you deleted those Genestealers, their power will ikely already killed half of your army, while other small guys such as Rippers are now raising the banner high everywhere already. Honestly, Genestealer hordes are the new Distraction Carnifexes, and a really excellent one.

That is just it, I have no "Stand Out" units in my list. Nothing you can look at and say, THAT has to die, priority target! I guess maybe my Terminators, but even they will likely not end up making their cost back and likely just be a distraction. My bikes are my main thrust in this I think. With 6-7 bikes, I can just drive up, Park, unleash godly hurricanes of bolter rounds, and then counter charge. I really feel like I can play rope a dope with nids, he has to come to me on this game. I can beat him in melee with anything he throws at me, but if he runs MW spam, that might end my hopes quickly. What are the priority targets for me if I see them on the table? I know literally nothing about them, first time against Nids in 9th.

If tyranids want to do mortal wound/spore spam custodes stand no chance unfortunately.


Your army either has to have a certain amount of bodies or a certain amount of shots to beat tyranids. Custodes rarely have either.


Now, if they spam big bugs, or elite infantry Custodes will win that fight. 2+ armor saves are rough for nids to get through without mortal wounds.



Its honestly just a bad matchup either way. Either the nids melt us or hoard us and win, or they dont and we win.

Rarely a close game.

Neophyte2012 wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
That would be a mix of two and four. Why anyone would take 40 15 points genestealers with T4 5++ is beyond me.

The 1st turn charge of supersonic Genestealer hordes may not aims to actually kill all your important units. Alternatively, it could just be board control units and road blocks. If they failed to kill your 1st rank units, they could just block your army's movement, delaying your movement on to the objective you want. If they success in killing, even better, use fight again stratagem to consolidate into your 2nd rank units to jam them, denying your movement even further.

By then you are already on your back foot. Cleaning out hordes of T4 5++ and even 5+++ is easier in said than done. If you dedicate your firepower cleaning 40 such bodies, you will get smitey smite and shooty shoot by a bunch of Zoanthropes and a dozen Hiveguards and other big gun bugs. By the time you deleted those Genestealers, their power will ikely already killed half of your army, while other small guys such as Rippers are now raising the banner high everywhere already. Honestly, Genestealer hordes are the new Distraction Carnifexes, and a really excellent one.

As a tyranid player myself with limited expereince I am not very impressed with the genstealers at the moment. I am not trying to invalidate your opinion and you might be quite right. My regular opponent is an ork and while they do not have the 5++ they are about just as dangerush for around half the points. (Mind you things like 'da jump and green tide certanly does a lot for those 60 orks. Also the re-roll charge range. Sometimes they also only need to charge 8".) Orks in general has very few good units for me to charge. And if I somehow do get to use stealers as a missile my opponent can screen to some degree. Further, many genstealers die to overwath. That you can no longer decleare a failed charge also makes the fight twice stratagem much worse on them as they before quite easaly could munch up two units or more. This is much more dificult.

While I rarly play marines I would think primaris boltguns would mess stealers up quite badly. 300 point for 20 die very fast. Blast rules also would be quite bad for them. While nobody takes missile launchers I would hate to see them eat 24 shots off 4 devestators. I do not know how custodies would match up against them. But shoot them dead, body block a charge with something else.

To sumarice my thought in the genestealers a lot of small changes turned them from very good to very bad very fast. A lot on tyranid players agree with me. Your milage may vary.

Custodes can have the shots easily, its just most don't take that many of those units. Hitting on 2+ with rr1's on 120 bolters/HB's is really strong when you have the toughness and melee to help. But it doesn't easily beat Marines, Admech, or DG, so its not common. But it would destroy Nids, Ork hordes, Quins.

Probably most builds of GSC as well then.

So would it be better to drop the Terminators and just go full bikes and shield bois? because honestly that feels super TFG territory.

Againgst nids you probably would never need more than a squad of 5 bikes and a biker captain for chaff clearing.

Sag guard are good because nids dont have the long range firepower to remove them easily without a huge expenditure of firepower (double exocrine).

Couple of shield squads to tie up anything running up the board and a telemon (nids suck againgst T8) also shut down their options.



Bring what you want, but at the end of the day, i still feel nids vs custodes doesnt make the best of games.