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What races are capable of doing this? The Orks are more heavily established in the Galaxy than the Tyranids, and they reproduce like crazy, giving them ample numbers to fight back. Under proper leadership, they are an unstoppable tide.

Any other time I've read about Tyranids being beaten, it has always been through either strategy (sacrificing low biomass planets to prepare for a counterattack) or through exploiting weaknesses faster than they can adapt (bio toxin DOW2). But has anyone ever actually beaten a Tyranid Swarm in a direct confrontation?

The Ultramarines, they beat them in a straight up Space Battle IIRC, which led to a defeat of hive fleet behemoth. Ciaphas Cain novels make it sound like there is hope against the tyranid threat, so I am guessing its fairly possible, just really damn hard.

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
What races are capable of doing this?

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
What races are capable of doing this? The Orks are more heavily established in the Galaxy than the Tyranids, and they reproduce like crazy, giving them ample numbers to fight back. Under proper leadership, they are an unstoppable tide.

Any other time I've read about Tyranids being beaten, it has always been through either strategy (sacrificing low biomass planets to prepare for a counterattack) or through exploiting weaknesses faster than they can adapt (bio toxin DOW2). But has anyone ever actually beaten a Tyranid Swarm in a direct confrontation?

The Necrons have wiped out the Tyranids in every space battle between the two. On one occasion, they single-handedly saved a Tau world, and went on to reap said Tau world.

Chenkov crushed the Vanguard of a fairly large hive fleet (forgot the name, but they came from the Ghoul Stars) using millions of guardsmen. So the IG certainly has the capacity.

Really I think most races have the ability to defeat them, but it is about not letting yourself get into a war of attrition. You must beat them quicker than they can adapt to your methods. If you let yourself get into a "grinding" war with them, where each side isn't making much progress they will eventually evolve and overcome your strategies. However, if you can employee a very powerful and effective strategy from the start I think they are kill-able.

There was an incident of an Ork held world becoming infested with Genestealers.

Disliking the sneaky bugs, a full scale WAAAGH! was launched right at the Hive Fleet.

Still a stalemate.

The Dark Eldar have quite a good shot, what with their easy escape route and their volume of poison shots for the big bugz

A straight fight, not many. (Maybe necrons.) It's like trying to fight a swarm of locust in a stand up fight.

It depends what kind of army it is. A splinter fleet, most armies could take it down, but it would be a good fight. A full on hive fleet is much less likely. If anyone could stop the Tyranids I'd say Daemons or Necrons.

In theory, due to their own inherent power and lack of biomass, Daemons should be a great counter to Tyranids.
However, I don't know what affect the SitW has on Daemons and whether there's many instances of them meeting each other in the fluff...

See my Avatar

But most races. It's like killing an Avatar 'orchestrated the defeat of a hive fleet! Wow, he must be great!'


Von Chogg

I'm not actually sure about daemons. I thought they disappear back to the warp when they die, but I remember hearing otherwise as well. And I think SitW would stop them from spawning near Tyranids, but the daemons could just spawn down the street and walk over.

Tyranids lose all the time...even in there codex they lose.

The Imperial Guard can.

In the IG codex it mentions that a Cadian force once defeated a Tyranid Siege of their Fortress without "lossing a single company"

I can only assume that the regimental command took lessons from CREEEEEEED!

The stalemate at Octavius (Octarius?) is probably the best example of Orks being one race most suitable to standing up to Tyranids in a full on straight fight.

For the Imperium, whether its Astartes or Imperial Guard, they're able to beat them but not without great cost of lives and resources (as the Ultramarines victory shows). To that end, Deathwatch Kill-Teams targetting specific targets of interest would be more suitable, but that's not exactly a stand-up fight.

Well I'm not sure of fluff that has Daemons and tyranids going at it, but there is a painting from some official source, can't remember which, which has bloodletters beating face on a bunch of tyranid gribblies.

And the Ultramarines have never really won in a straight up fight, against Behemoth they took out the Norn Queen which severed the link to the hivemind so the nids stopped working in cohesion. And against Leviathan they used a super-virus, but that's only really a stop gap as the nids should be able to adapt to that particular tactic.

When it comes down to it I would say Orks, Necrons, Imperial Guard if fully supported, and probably Daemons if they could stay stable enough would all be able to defeat the Tyranids in a ground pounding slug fest.

In space however I think that the Eldar, Space Marines/Imperial Navy, Necrons, and Tau would all be able to beat them. That's how the Tau and Eldar have dealt with Tyranid fleets in the past, with the Tau notably destroying a splinter fleet without suffering a casualty. Likely because they heavily outrange the Tyranid space faring creatures, you can only shoot something so fast when you use muscle spasms to do so.

 Just Dave wrote:
In theory, due to their own inherent power and lack of biomass, Daemons should be a great counter to Tyranids.
However, I don't know what affect the SitW has on Daemons and whether there's many instances of them meeting each other in the fluff...

There is at least one instance of Chaos Daemons and Tyranids duking it out, the Shadow can't banish Daemons once already summoned it seems.

anyone has the capacity to beat Tyranids , but its do they have the supplies to back it up , 9 times out of 10 ( in guard engagments ) we run out of ammunition and are forces to fall back , but more accuratly in a straight up fight i would say every race witih exception of Eldar ( limited numbers ) has the ablity for kick ass in a straight up fight given that ammunition is abundant . Tyranids are your ultiment horde army that trample their enemy in numbers , which sadly puts the guard to shame . but its all luck and tactics really

I think the biggest problem with an offensive against the Nids is actually getting it going. Most of the time, armies are counterattacking against the Tyranids, only after their first warning signs (Genestealer Cults, Lictor Assassins) have occurred. So you are already trying to contain a rapidly deteriorating situation with the targeted planets while simultaneously preparing for a much larger conflict once the tendrils pierce the sky.

I always wondered why the other races didn't engage the Tyranids in space battles more often.

The fluff makes it pretty clear that the Nids are almost as badass in space as they are on the ground, but, in open space you at least have infinite room to maneuver. Rather than dump all your forces on a planet and around its orbit, it seems like it'd be more logical to forgo engaging the Tyranid fleets in wars of attrition, and instead simply perform massive hit and run/harassment offensives, whittling the Tyranid fleet down over the course of lightyears and kiting them along the way.

Necrons pwning Nid fleets booyah.

Necrons, Imperial Guard, Dark Eldar, Tau and Orks have and can beat the snot out of Tyraninds

Tau but only if there aren't too many nids. I think it's also possible they could win in a grinding stalemate because they're also adapting (though not as quickly), and one lucky technological breakthrough could win them the war. However against a full hive fleet they wouldn't stand much of a chance.

Nothing can beat a full scale nid attack

BlaxicanX wrote:
I always wondered why the other races didn't engage the Tyranids in space battles more often.

The fluff makes it pretty clear that the Nids are almost as badass in space as they are on the ground, but, in open space you at least have infinite room to maneuver. Rather than dump all your forces on a planet and around its orbit, it seems like it'd be more logical to forgo engaging the Tyranid fleets in wars of attrition, and instead simply perform massive hit and run/harassment offensives, whittling the Tyranid fleet down over the course of lightyears and kiting them along the way.

The few space battles they have been in haven't gone well for the nids. The tau destroyed a splinted fleet without losing a single ship. For comparisons, tau have some of the weakest ships.

Yeah I was going to say. The Tau handing the Tyranids their ass in space pretty much affirms my belief.

Are there any inatances in the fluff of Daemons attacking Tyranids? I dont think the 4 Chaos gods enjoy the idea of all organic life being stripped from the galaxy, which would end their existance.

So have there been any major Chaos attacks against the Nids?

Horus654 wrote:
Are there any inatances in the fluff of Daemons attacking Tyranids? I dont think the 4 Chaos gods enjoy the idea of all organic life being stripped from the galaxy, which would end their existance.

So have there been any major Chaos attacks against the Nids?

Nothing major; Chaos as a whole is more focused on the IoM for the time being. They don't like the Tyranids, but the IoM is largely in the way first of all. If it were easy for a large Chaos fleet to pour out of the Eye of Terror and attack a Tyranid Hive Fleet en masse, I imagine less would be made over Cadia's importance as a bulwark against the Chaos fleets.

That said, there are plenty of instances of smaller attacks against the Tyranids. The Iron Warriors for instance attacked a small tendril to hijack a Hive Ship.

Daemons, which are more free-ranging but mostly planet-bound, tend to be on the receiving end of the Tyranids.

Read fear to tread ladies and gents, if Choas wanted the nids gone... there would be no nids, imagine a world in the largest hive fleets path, now imagine the nids sending billions of warrior organisms down to said planet, now imagine the Deamons start popping up all over the planet and taking out the nids at will, now the planet decides to join the fight..literally, and starts "fireing mountains" at the command ships and popping them... nids literally dont stand a chance if chaos decides there a threat.