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I've seen a lot of people in Jy2's threads asking to see a competitive Tyranid list up against a venomspam army. Lucky for all of us, I happen to have both!

Without further ado, meet the armies.

Hive Fleet Amon Amarth


Flyrant with 2x TL devourers, old adversary, warlord
Flyrant with 2x TL devourers, old adversary, hive commander

3x Hive Guard
10x Ymgarl Genestealers
Doom of Malan'tai in a pod

2x Tervigon with adrenal glands, toxin sacs, catalyst, onslaught, cluster spines and scything talons
20x Termagants
11x Termagants

25x Gargoyles with toxin sacs

3x Biovores

The Kabal of the Screaming Spectre


Asdrubael Vect
Haemonculous with Shattershard and Liquifier gun

7 Incubi with Klaivex, onslaught and demiklaives
-Raider with aethersails, night shields, flickerfields and a shock prow

2x4 Truborn with 4x blasters
-Venom with extra cannon and night shields

5x5 Warriors with shredder
-Venom with extra cannon and night shields

3x Ravager with night shields and flickerfields

Mission
Since people seem to enjoy Jy2's recent games, and I personally love multi-tiered tournament style missions, I decided to play a BAO type scenario.

The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins.

I rolled up Relic as the primary and The Scouring as the secondary

Here's a view of the board


There's a lack of large LOS blocking terrain, but the three building ruins across the center can be used to get cover and possibly even hide Tyranid MCs. Plenty of area terrain all over the place.

The relic obviously goes in the center in the small building


The scouring objectives are spread across the center line, with the DE placing them as far apart as possible to try to force the Nids to split up and the Nids trying to get them as centrally focused as possible.



Warlord traits and psychic powers
Vect gets night fighting (Hooray, for what use it'll be versus the Tyranids)
The Flyrant gets -1 to Vect's reserves (gak)


The Doom keeps cataclysm
The Flyrant warlord gets endurance and warp speed
The Flyrant hive commander gets life leech and enfeeble
Pink Tervigon gets iron arm, life leechand haemmorage
Green Tervigon gets iron arm, enfeeble and life leech

Deployment
Deployment is Hammer and Anvil

Vect wins the roll of for first turn and selects the side of the board with the furthest objective

The mission favors the Tyranids, but deployment type, night fighting, a useless warlord trait, mediocre psychic powers and losing first turn means they are in a poor position out of the gate.

Who do you think is going to take this and why? I'm about to deploy and start rolling, should have the report up tonight or tomorrow.

Tyranids, narrowly. If the Flyrants can pop the transports early, then Biovores will wreck face. Otherwise, it could get ugly with so much poison...

It will be a massacre for the DE. DE are designed to take on tyranids! If DE get first turn (which they most likily will with vect) they can easily down a flyrant or any MC they want with there DL and SC. In the unlikily event tyranids do go first they carnt pop any transports reliably with the flyrants because of night fighting and a few more terma's wont do much. Next turn the at least one flyrant will be downed by venom fire then slagged by darklight. Vect will want to be in combat with the Tervigons as he has an abserd amount of attacks which hit on 3's, wound on 3's and ignore your save while the shadow field and look out sir to keep him safe. If his shadow field is poped by gaunts watch his str 10 blast which regain his wounds troll you.

This isn't a fair match because the tyranid army isn't capable of taking on that much mech. Your only anti vehical are 24'', 18 with night shields. DoM carn't hurt people in transports and anybody out of it will be dead anyway (exploding venoms).

Although i do want to see a report with vect, so i will be waiting and trying to hold back my sympathy for the tyranid.

This is going to be a tough battle for the bugs but it isn't unwinnable for them. The key is the survival of those flyrants. I don't think reserving them is a good idea but at the same time, if he can't hide the flyrants upon deployment, then he may be forced to reserve them. However, one thing to keep in mind is that even the gribblies can hurt the DE transports, both with shooting and assault. Well, they do need to be within 6" to hurt the vehicles with shooting and gargoyles won't be able to hurt them in assault without furious charge.

Iron Arm will help against the dark lances and blasters, though Endurance is what the bugs really need. Ymgarls could be an X-factor if DE places them too close to area terrain, but the main offense will come from the flyrants.

But just like in my GK vs Tyranids game, firepower isn't everything. Nids can be a serious underdog in the offensive department but still win the game if they play the mission properly. All things considered, I like the tyranid's chances in this game. I would say 60% DE's game and 40% Tyranid's game.

if you want a paper for the rock, well you have it, with some luck he can take out the tervigon's turn 1 and after that its an uphill battle for the Nids

 Valek wrote:
if you want a paper for the rock, well you have it, with some luck he can take out the tervigon's turn 1 and after that its an uphill battle for the Nids

Player skill matters. The DE player could have no idea on what his priorities should be. Just because you have a fly swatter doesn't mean you know how to use it

Well, the game is in the books, as they say. To anyone who thinks it's gonna be a shutout either way, well, I hope you like surprises. That was one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm really just upset it wasn't with another player. The dice were all over the place on both sides, it was awesome. I'll try to get the deployment and first turn done tonight.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Valek wrote:
if you want a paper for the rock, well you have it, with some luck he can take out the tervigon's turn 1 and after that its an uphill battle for the Nids

Player skill matters. The DE player could have no idea on what his priorities should be. Just because you have a fly swatter doesn't mean you know how to use it

Considering I'm playing myself, I hope I know what I'm doing! Haha. I've actually yet to lose a game of 6E with my Nids. I've played a lot of wolves, necrons, Eldrad/Tau, and IG, but never a venomspam, cronair, IG airforce or Eldrad support airforce. In my experience, Tyranids have 100% the tools to beat any balanced TAC list out there. Their biggest weakness is against heavy firepower with Eldar psyker defense, or against fliers. I'm going into this matchup knowing exactly what DE does to Tyranids, having gotten stomped by Dashofpepper's DE back in 5th at several tournaments. It's a winnable game, but I'm more excited about finally being in an underdog matchup!

 Valek wrote:
if you want a paper for the rock, well you have it, with some luck he can take out the tervigon's turn 1 and after that its an uphill battle for the Nids

Definitely a possibility. Losing Tervigons really pulls the stitching out of the Tyranid's sails.

 jifel wrote:
Tyranids, narrowly. If the Flyrants can pop the transports early, then Biovores will wreck face. Otherwise, it could get ugly with so much poison...

That's definitely a possibility. If the Flyrants make it into the armada, they can potentially drop 2 vehicles each per turn. Biovores obliterate Dark Eldar with a serious amount of hate.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
It will be a massacre for the DE. DE are designed to take on tyranids! If DE get first turn (which they most likily will with vect) they can easily down a flyrant or any MC they want with there DL and SC. In the unlikily event tyranids do go first they carnt pop any transports reliably with the flyrants because of night fighting and a few more terma's wont do much. Next turn the at least one flyrant will be downed by venom fire then slagged by darklight. Vect will want to be in combat with the Tervigons as he has an abserd amount of attacks which hit on 3's, wound on 3's and ignore your save while the shadow field and look out sir to keep him safe. If his shadow field is poped by gaunts watch his str 10 blast which regain his wounds troll you.

This isn't a fair match because the tyranid army isn't capable of taking on that much mech. Your only anti vehical are 24'', 18 with night shields. DoM carn't hurt people in transports and anybody out of it will be dead anyway (exploding venoms).

Although i do want to see a report with vect, so i will be waiting and trying to hold back my sympathy for the tyranid.

In 5th edition that was definitely the case. In 6th, however, the Flyrants can tear apart the vehicles with impunity while being extremely hard to kill if they make it into the air. If Tervigons aren't brought down before they start casting Iron Arm, they can also become extremely hard to kill. Mass infantry is a DE's worst nightmare, which is why I have shredders everywhere to deal with hordes. An average of 4 wounds per venom is great vs TMC, but useless vs big blobs.

Vect's ability to seize and walk through anything the Nids have on the board is not to be trifled with. His unit is a big point sink, but it's relatively hard to kill (For DE standards) and can kill a lot of deathstars. If he makes it into the Tyranid lines, it'll hurt.

Nids can definitely handle that much mech in 6e, but first turn is really important.

 jy2 wrote:
This is going to be a tough battle for the bugs but it isn't unwinnable for them. The key is the survival of those flyrants. I don't think reserving them is a good idea but at the same time, if he can't hide the flyrants upon deployment, then he may be forced to reserve them. However, one thing to keep in mind is that even the gribblies can hurt the DE transports, both with shooting and assault. Well, they do need to be within 6" to hurt the vehicles with shooting and gargoyles won't be able to hurt them in assault without furious charge.

Iron Arm will help against the dark lances and blasters, though Endurance is what the bugs really need. Ymgarls could be an X-factor if DE places them too close to area terrain, but the main offense will come from the flyrants.

But just like in my GK vs Tyranids game, firepower isn't everything. Nids can be a serious underdog in the offensive department but still win the game if they play the mission properly. All things considered, I like the tyranid's chances in this game. I would say 60% DE's game and 40% Tyranid's game.

100% agree on everything you said. If you reserve the Tyrants you know you will probably lose both Tervigons before they come in, and even then, with Anvil deployment I'd have to deepstrike to even get close to threatening them, another major risk considering I only have 12" guns vs all the vehicles. If you put them out you risk losing all of your forward projection power ASAP.

Good Iron Arm rolls can get the Tervigons into turns 3+ which is exactly how you beat DE, by surviving their alpha strike and just wearing them down (or alpha striking them, if you can).

The Ymgarls are a massive factor, as a multi assault on 2+ vehicles would be catastrophic for the DE, but with so much terrain on this board, it's impossible to know where your opponent is going. Although I obviously know where I'd put it (and playing against myself, I definitely know where they are!) in this matchup you can't fill a terrain piece without crippling your damage output and you can't get far enough away from the likely pieces without putting yourself out of position.

I feel the odds are the same as you.

I voted DE by a small margin...DE is still the bane of Tyranid existence. The sheer number of poison shots will decimate your MCs.

Your only possible saving grace is if you can rush in with your Flyrants and are able to take down 2 transports a turn (a vector strike + shooting with a set of devourers).

This is if you survive to reach the lines to take 2 out a turn. My bet is, if you reserve Flyrants your tervigons are dead, if you don't, you'll lose your warlord and a Tervigon.

Am I incorrect to say that night fighting will actually help nids in this one? I am unfamiliar with how Vect can use night fighting, is that so he can control whether night fight is on or off? If not, you get a +1/2 to your cover saves if DE shoots at nids and so you'll actually survive an additional round of shooting due to that.

Either way, I'm excited to see the full report as I am in a tourney in March and I'm sure I'll see my share of similar lists...

Good luck!

roxor08 wrote:

Am I incorrect to say that night fighting will actually help nids in this one? I am unfamiliar with how Vect can use night fighting, is that so he can control whether night fight is on or off? If not, you get a +1/2 to your cover saves if DE shoots at nids and so you'll actually survive an additional round of shooting due to that.

Either way, I'm excited to see the full report as I am in a tourney in March and I'm sure I'll see my share of similar lists...

Good luck!

The entire dark eldar codex has night vision so we ignore all the negative effects while keeping the benifits!!!

Night fighting can only help the dark eldar (maybe saving a transport from that first turn fly-by) and it gives no benifits to the tyranids so of course he will use it. Lets just hope the dark eldar player knows what he is doing, as dark eldar are a real finess army and even when they hard counter tyranids, they still go down quick if he isnt smart.

This will boil down to the DE players skill in movement and target priority.

The DE can target around 18 different units (entire nid army plus) that first turn and choose to distribute somewhere between 100 to 130 poison shots which is going to force at least 33 saves round one. Done right, that should be enough to take out all the big guys.

Compounding the nid problem is the maneuverability of the DE on a table with pretty good cover everywhere while the relevant portion of the nid army is walking. It should be trivial for the DE player to force the nids to split up. When that happens DE should be able to focus on only one part of the army at a time...

As a nid player I wouldn't worry too much about the DL, but that amount of poison and this layout is a killer.

Site note: I love the white on the DE army. very cool and look forward to more pics.

Considering how light you are on synapse, you pretty much have to start the Tyrants on the board. 7 venoms plus 10 lances put an average of about 13 wounds on your big guys (assuming 3+ armor and 5+ cover). If you give DE 2 turns of shooting without the tyrants on the board your little guys will all be running off the board by the time they show up.

If the DE can play the range game properly and knock out synapse quickly without taking too many casualties it should be a pretty comfortable win. Even if the tyrants get airborne, venom squads are great for knocking them down, move 12 and take snap shots at 24" or rapid fire snap shots at 12".

I'm not a huge fan of Vect's unit, 600 points in one AV10 open-topped transport. I'd rather see some of those points spent on some eldar allies, a doomseer on a bike and some GJB are a great addition to any DE force and are a big headache for nids trying to get psy powers off

Big thanks to Jy2, I've been stealing your battle report layout! It's a clean way to do it, and should really be used by more players as a template.

Deployment:



Tyranids fail to seize the objective and the game begins.

--------------------------------------------------------------


Dark Eldar1




Tyranids 1




Dark Eldar 2



Dark Eldar 3



Tyranids 3



Dark Eldar 4



Tyranids 4

I like your format.

Feel free to borrow anything from my BR's if you like. Looks like a very, very good start for the bugs, considering that they were going 2nd and had to endure a full-on DE alpha strike.

I'm reading this one as well. I'm interested in seeing the result vs this dark eldar menace.

Kind of a bad start for DE. I would have shifted to refuse one flank and dropped a flyrant first and possibly a tervigon. Not really sure why hes giving up range to the tyranid units turn one as it defeats the purpose of night shields. The tyrant guard should not have had range turn one and with night fight really should not have done much damage to any venoms (which should be at the forefront. We'll see how this one goes but it's not very good strategy to go head to head with the bugs like this.

Lovely report by the way. I love your winter theme DE!

 Red Corsair wrote:
Kind of a bad start for DE. I would have shifted to refuse one flank and dropped a flyrant first and possibly a tervigon. Not really sure why hes giving up range to the tyranid units turn one as it defeats the purpose of night shields. The tyrant guard should not have had range turn one and with night fight really should not have done much damage to any venoms (which should be at the forefront. We'll see how this one goes but it's not very good strategy to go head to head with the bugs like this.

I was about to post pretty much the exact same thing, not a fan of the DE's first turn. Why pay for night shields if you're just going to move forward and give every unit in his army something to shoot first turn? Looking at how far behind the front lines the Tyrants are the DE could have easily prevented the nids from doing any damage at all on their first turn by staying out side of 36" from the tyrants but still have the venoms/ravager/raider in range of all of the front line nids. Even as it is, unless the dice do something crazy, with only 4 synapse creatures it shouldn't be long before the nids are taking LOTS of Ld6 tests.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Kind of a bad start for DE. I would have shifted to refuse one flank and dropped a flyrant first and possibly a tervigon. Not really sure why hes giving up range to the tyranid units turn one as it defeats the purpose of night shields. The tyrant guard should not have had range turn one and with night fight really should not have done much damage to any venoms (which should be at the forefront. We'll see how this one goes but it's not very good strategy to go head to head with the bugs like this.

Lovely report by the way. I love your winter theme DE!

The way the warlord flyrant rolled saves, that wasn't happening. The DE rolled pretty badly and besides the first Tervigon, the Tyranids rolled well. The purpose of moving forward was to get the extra 8 blaster shots from the trueborn and 20 splinter shots from warriors. Without those shots nothing besides gargoyles would've died turn 1 and then there would be two spawned units of gaunts, two iron armed tervigons, and two flying Flyrants. Not to mention staying back or refusing flank plays into the Ymgarls and Doom's strengths.

Night fighting doesn't affect the Hive Guard for the most part, and the flyrants only have 12" range vs night shields so it doesn't do anything this matchup.

DE are all about bringing all of the firepower to bear immediately, and if the dice had gone average, there'd be a dead warlord flyrant, tervigon and possibly hive guard on the flank.

Bugs_N_Orks wrote:
I was about to post pretty much the exact same thing, not a fan of the DE's first turn. Why pay for night shields if you're just going to move forward and give every unit in his army something to shoot first turn? Looking at how far behind the front lines the Tyrants are the DE could have easily prevented the nids from doing any damage at all on their first turn by staying out side of 36" from the tyrants but still have the venoms/ravager/raider in range of all of the front line nids. Even as it is, unless the dice do something crazy, with only 4 synapse creatures it shouldn't be long before the nids are taking LOTS of Ld6 tests.

As someone who has tons of experience with both armies, staying back would've really hurt my chances of doing much damage, and with the way the dice went, absolutely nothing would've died.

Putting up turn 2 now.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
DE are all about bringing all of the firepower to bear immediately,

That's only true if you're in danger of taking a lot of return fire, the tyranids have no long range shooting that can (realistically) hurt vehicles. The tyranids need to get close to hurt you, why do their job for them? When playing foot spam GK do you rush forward to get your blasters in range, or do you hover outside their threat range while wearing them down with 36" range shooting?

 Traceoftoxin wrote:
staying back would've really hurt my chances of doing much damage, and with the way the dice went, absolutely nothing would've died.

So by moving up you got an extra 20 splinter shots and 7 lance shots (since I'd advocate sitting back and shooting with vect until you see how the battle develops), and in return you lost 2 venoms, 4 trueborn, raider, 5ish incubi, and 2 (sort of, one's pinned) warrior squads, so 32-40 splinter shots (rapid fire) and 5 lances (and all of that damage was pretty much expected). Whereas if you'd sat back out of Tyrant/Hive guard range first turn you'd have just as much firepower over 2 turns, but would have taken quite literally zero casualties. I'm just not seeing how that's a good trade.

All that said, at the end of 2 there's only 1 synapse creature left, and I think the DE can probably still take this as long as they don't get careless with their scoring units.

I'm not counting out the bugs yet. They've worked wonders even when they were losing badly (Janthkin's bugs against my grey knights) but they've also lost badly when they were behind as well (my bugs against my own space wolves).

But the ymgarls and Doom can still play a big role in this game. I have a feeling that they are going to turn this game around....though I am not sure if the bugs can still win it due to the fact that DE's got First Blood.

Bugs_N_Orks wrote:

So by moving up you got an extra 20 splinter shots and 7 lance shots (since I'd advocate sitting back and shooting with vect until you see how the battle develops), and in return you lost 2 venoms, 4 trueborn, raider, 5ish incubi, and 2 (sort of, one's pinned) warrior squads, so 32-40 splinter shots (rapid fire) and 5 lances (and all of that damage was pretty much expected). Whereas if you'd sat back out of Tyrant/Hive guard range first turn you'd have just as much firepower over 2 turns, but would have taken quite literally zero casualties. I'm just not seeing how that's a good trade.

All that said, at the end of 2 there's only 1 synapse creature left, and I think the DE can probably still take this as long as they don't get careless with their scoring units.

Position is everything. Like I said, nothing of the Tyranids would've died, then both Tervigons would've had Iron Arm, most of the gargoyles would be alive to jump on the objectives, the DE would be stuck back in their deployment zone in prime position to be hit by the Ymgarls and Doom.

I considered doing like you said and playing more conservatively, but instead I opted to take the risk to try to do more damage. It didn't quite pay off as well as I'd liked, but I knew the Nids wouldn't do any more damage than they did and the DE would be in a much better position for the rest of the game.

Putting up turn 3+ tonight.

Iron arm has NO EFFECT on splinter weaponry, which is what will be the downfall of nids from long range. Why do you keep mentioning that power as if it even matters in this particular matchup?

Because it helps against darklite weaponry. 3 ravagers and blasters puts up quite a bit of S8 guns that Iron Arm will be good against.

So normally, the plan should be to throw up Iron Arm and have flyrants & hive guards target the venoms. This also has the added bonus of providing your biovores, gargoyles, ymgarls and the Doom with a target-rich environment.

 tetrisphreak wrote:
Iron arm has NO EFFECT on splinter weaponry, which is what will be the downfall of nids from long range. Why do you keep mentioning that power as if it even matters in this particular matchup?

When someone refuses to fail a 3+ save and your only option of not letting them take a 3+ wounds on a 4/5 vs a 2, it can really reduce your damage output.

That ended pretty much as expected, the DE probably lost a few more vehicles than necessary but a win's a win! Even if Doom hit the warriors they can go to ground for 3+ cover, that's one of the funny things about Doom and DE, once DE get blown out of their vehicles there usually aren't enough left alive for Doom to get much out them. Also Night Shields don't do anything to weapons with a range of 6" or less.

One could always hope for an underdog victory....though I did vote for DE to take this one.

Bugs really need 1st turn to have almost any chance against this type of army.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:

 tetrisphreak wrote:
Iron arm has NO EFFECT on splinter weaponry, which is what will be the downfall of nids from long range. Why do you keep mentioning that power as if it even matters in this particular matchup?

When someone refuses to fail a 3+ save and your only option of not letting them take a 3+ wounds on a 4/5 vs a 2, it can really reduce your damage output.

A player with hot dice can also overcome s8 ap2 weaponry such as dark lances and s5 ap2 disintegrators by making 5+ cover saves. Yes the save is worse but also the volume of s8 fire is probably 1/6 the volume of poisoned splinter fire. The point I am making is this: I have done great with my nids in 6th edition (win/loss ratio is in my sig). The losses I have suffered have been at the hands of dark eldar players, who use their long range and fast skimmers to kite me around the table and flood my MC's with tons of ap5 wounds...Eventually i will fail more 3+ saves than I have wounds, lose my synapse creatures, and then the rest of the game is a crapshoot vs my smaller gaunts. Trust me, in the future vs nid players, use the range of your weapons and night shields to your utmost advantage, even if it means missing out a few s8 shots on turn 1.


Now, if the idea of psychic biomancy buffs really irks you and you want to shut down a nid player -- Bring an allied contingent of eldar with a farseer joined to some rangers or pathfinders. All told the combo is less than 200 points and runes of warding shuts off 50% of the tyranid psychic powers (average dice roll on 3d6 is 10.5). In addition you get a farseer that can take divination and give re-rolls to hit with prescience to any of your dark eldar skimmers or infantry units, or possibly roll up some really good other powers from the divination table. Plus the pathfinders fit with the poison theme of the original army since they have sniper weapons -- except theirs have rending or uber-rending depending on what you roll to-hit. Overall it's a super solid combo.

That said i know this was a solo game but it did play out in the end as expected - Dark Eldar shooting trumps tyranid footslogging and assaults.

Thank you for posting the report and all the pictures.

BTW, you are missing Tyranids Turn 2.