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Ok so I was having a conversation between two friends and we were debating on how to beat the classic Tervigon list, and it was coming to me that this specific build is a sort of problem.

we have the following armies, CSM, Orks, Eldar, Necrons and SM these are 4 armies and with each we have not found a definite way to combat the list, the problem is that its way too much for target priority, with too many wounds and it fast and hard to hit as well, which is a big problem as well..

One friend thought the best way is too take one MC out at a time, but this leads to the rest of his/her army getting breathing space, plus when the Doom comes out and Zonethropes out of the Spore pods there too close to your deployment zone.

I thought about instead about worrying on what my opponent has concentrate on the mission, the problem with that is that the list is also very flexible as it can pump out troops like a big mac in a fast thru drive, plus with added MC to break apart stuff that I will need for said missions that tactic will most likely crumble..

So I was wondering on what the Dakka community though about beating this specific list as I thought this would be an interesting convo, we were not talking much about lists more about tactics that would combat this in a tournament scenario as well as being a good tournament list as well, so what are your guys thoughts on the dealing with it?

Cheers to all comments

I play Tervispam competitively, and the best counter is:

1. Kill Point games. Not your call, but just saying its a lot harder on us. Nids also happen to match up very well with 4/5 of those armies (not Eldar). All I can say is to focus down one Tervigon at a time,find one without Iron Arm and pump high strength or rending shots at it. Eldar will do this best. Just focus down what you can while staying at arms length. Try to pack up so that the Doom has to land on the outside of a castle, unless he has biovores.

Try denying psychic powers too, SW do that really well. Anything that you can do though to slow down the main advance will help, guarenteed. Drop Pods, DSing units, anything to get in his DZ so that he can't come to yours. Triple Tervigons is like that rolling ball in Indiana Jones. If it rolls towards you, itll just keep going. Try to contain him to his DZ so he can't throw out scoring units on every objective, he'll be limited to his half, when you can hopefully at least tie him up. Nids rely on synergy, try to "break up" his army as much as possible.

Unless youre playing me of course... in that case charge right at them!

I once killed a tervigon outright on turn 1, got to love the shokk attakk gun and it's double six result.

second turn he made a 36" charge into the swarmlord. poor bigmek.

the main thing to do is focus on one, never spread the bullets. a monster with 1 wound is the same as a monster on 6 during his turn. massed shoota fire will bring down tervigons, but it has to be massed.

is anti-tank weaponry failing you? 2 predators with lascannons should do the best part of whittling the wounds off, and only hive guard and tyrannofexes will crack them back. orks can bring 15 tankbustas in a battlewagon, that's usually 1 dead bug per turn, when combined with some lootas and shootas shooting. just save the last wound for the grots to take off with their wee blasters, it's always amusing

not sure how eldar are failing, you got your rolls-of-a-6-to-wound-cause-instant-death thing going on S10 AP2 weapons. how is this not working?

necrons, well, you got to throw mindshackle at them. destroyer lord, mindshackle scarabs, charge the tervigon and proclaim 'stop hitting yourself!'. tesla destructors are pretty good against them as they're usually kept near their gaunts, and arc will usually have something to hit. bringing many destroyers & heavy destroyers and just keeping out of reach will work too. if you find they always charge towards you in the first turn, bring a monolith. they can't really deal with it without turning round and going back to hit it. just deepstrike on their side of the board, make sure you decide to go second (most of the guns necrons have are 24" range anyway, you want your first salvo to be effective!). they'll have 2 turns of charging towards your army before your army starts teleporting behind them.

the doom of malant'ai, transport vehicles. orks can do it, necrons can do it. eldar thrive on doing it, CSM and SM have rhinos which aren't ideal, but meltaguns will insta-splat him. he'll drop down, suck the life out of squat, then get shot to death - how easily can you kill 4 space marines? that's all he is.

eldar can castle on one board end until the enemy's upon them, then flat-out to wherever-the-hell-they-feel-like-going, then resume firing.

space marines, bring 3 drop pods, 2 with sacrificial units in and 1 with a decent objective grabber. drop the 2 sacrifices in the way, watch them have to bottleneck past the drop-pods, even when they're wrecked. just don't put them where they can charge them for better distance!

I dont think our OP really explained it incorrectly. It was a debate with myself and OP against a friend. Our friend was saying that bringing down 1 MC a turn is enough to give yourself breathing room and win. We we're saying yes you focus fire but 1 MC a turn is not enough. And that killing only 1 MC a turn will result in an easy victory for the 'nids. I myself was basically saying yes focus fire and yes target prioritize like you would with any army. But he was saying we were making it out to be to difficult and vice versa. he used SM as his first example then switched to Necrons. Saying it goes for any army.

This was all theory talk and we don't face this list often if at all. For example with my Eldar I have not faced this list yet. I also did state that 'nids list like this don't scare me as I have my own plan for them and Eldar cab comfortably handle it and I have seen this done.

EDIT: Grammar and such

 redkeyboard wrote:
Our OP explained it wrong. It was a debate with myself and OP against a friend. Our friend was saying that bringing down 1 MC a turn is enough to give yourself breathing room and win. We we're saying yes you focus fire but 1 MC a turn is not enough. And that killing only 1 MC a turn will result in an easy victory for the nids. I myself was basically saying yes focus fire and yes target prioritize like you would with any army. But he was saying we were making it out to be to difficult and vice versa. he used SM as his first example then switched to necrons. Saying it goes for any army.

This was all theory talk and we don't face this list often if at all. For example with my eldar I have not faced this list yet. I also did state that nids list like this don't scare me as I have my own plan for them and Eldar cab comfortably handle it and I have seen this done.

Killing one MC a turn is not enough in 1850+ games, because I can guarentee you won't be able to keep that rate up mid-late game, unless the Nid player has messed up royally. Eldar fare decently against Nids, its usually pretty close. Necrons though, usually can't even kill one MC a turn. Plus, with Flyrants, it takes one turn for him to get to you, thats not "breathing room" in my mind.

Focus firing is the way to go, a 1 Wound Tervigon is just as dangerous as a 6 Wound Tervigon. The key is to figure out which targets to deal with, which will depend on the mission, your army, your deployment, their deployment, psychic powers, etc.

Eldar butcher nids. The one thing you have to remember about nids is that the gaunts dont matter at all. Kill the tervigon and the gaunts all go away on their own. Kill two and the field is nearly clean. 20 guardians disembark from 2 WS, shoot a doomed tervigon, and its dead with over 8 rends. Wraithknights have been shooting distort shots since game start. D-scythe flamers can often kill multiple tervigons if they get close. Fire dragons still fry MCs as good as ever, and can melta bomb them in melee.

The huge thing about nids is that they rely on your force being S4-5 primarily and have difficulty wounding T6-9. When you throw rending in, tervigons loose a lot of their defensive ability since you can rend even T9 tervigons. FHT are a joke for their point cost, and are largely no more than a distraction unit. They fly up, punch one vehicle turn 2, and die to return fire. even 10 doomed guardians kill a tyrant. And thats ~270 points.

Killing a tervigon a turn is plenty of damage. It will be turn 3 before you get in assault with tervigons or their gaunts (maybe turn 2 if they get lucky charge distances on gaunts, but even guardians beat guants in melee if tervigons arent around, and then they run and you sweep). and if you have killed 3 tervigons that pretty much wipes the combat force of the nid player. Zoans are pretty mediocre seeing as you just charge them with literally any infantry and tie them up for the game or kill them. That 5-6 man guardian squad or any of those 3 man jetbike squads keep them busy for a while. Hive guard are largely ineffective except at maybe throwing some light damage on vehicles.

Nids are currently in a pretty bad spot. They have effectively 1 list with minor variations for tourneys. The whole list just creates problems, but has few solutions for enemy problems. You depend on your enemy not knowing how or not being effective enough to kill you before you can make it to him. This is not always the case, and therefore you dont have much of a tactical option to beat them. As a nid player, i have shelved my nids in hope of a new codex, because the current one will not consistently win vs a good eldar player.

I kill all the troops, fast as possible. Tervigons often exhaust after one, maybe two tries. No accountiong for dumb luck, but thats normal. So if you can kill one of the Tervigons with the AP weapons and waste on the troops unrelentingly (even though the flyers will, yes, beat you up) you have a very good cvhance.

I borrowed a buddies Blood angles once and tabled a traditional Tervigon list. Normal troops grounded the monsters and then I slashed them with Mephiston, while the jump troops burninated all the troops and then mostly avoided the Tervigons, torrenting them with Baal's until I could get to them. They were pretty torn up by the time I assaulted so it was clean up work.

Having said all that, this is indeed a tougher list and its ironic how terribad the Tyranids were before 6E.

I absolutely agree with zephoid, whenever people ask me what happened to Tyranids competitively in 6th, I tell them Tau and Eldar happened. Add Dark Eldar in there and you've got three armies with a massive advantage vs. Nids.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I absolutely agree with zephoid, whenever people ask me what happened to Tyranids competitively in 6th, I tell them Tau and Eldar happened. Add Dark Eldar in there and you've got three armies with a massive advantage vs. Nids.

And the Grey Knights.

God damn Nemesis force hammers and god damn dread knights and god damn incinerators and god damn S5 storm bolters.

 Kain wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I absolutely agree with zephoid, whenever people ask me what happened to Tyranids competitively in 6th, I tell them Tau and Eldar happened. Add Dark Eldar in there and you've got three armies with a massive advantage vs. Nids.

And the Grey Knights.

God damn Nemesis force hammers and god damn dread knights and god damn incinerators and god damn S5 storm bolters.

Eh, Grey Knights are manageable. Iron Arm and Shadow in the Warp help equalise the matchup. The key to beating them is playing the mission, take advantage of your numerical superiority.

Eldar are less of a bad match-up then before, and Grey Knights frankly don't scare me at all anymore. Assuming equal player skills, Tau do have a slight advantage over Nids, but its not insurmountable by any standard. Nids are very good at killing Pathfinders/Marker drones, and if you do that early its hard for your opponent to kill all your Tervigons. Dark Eldar, I admit, are still our worst match up, but again its not completely impossible to win, you just have to have a little luck and play the objectives.

Tau have the iridium battlesuit commander with drone controller with a squad of 10 marker drones making them all bs5. Yeah, good luck with killing that until your army is dead.

The problem is that tyranids turned from a high-skill army to a skill-capped army. After a certain point, it doenst matter how good you are. Once you have target priorities down, it all comes down to did you roll the right powers. Everyone knows exactly what a nid player will be doing. Advancing, crapping out gaunts, trying to get in assault, and flying some tyrants around. Thats because thats all nids can do at this point. Not even the 4th eldar codex in 6th was this limited.

I've played CSM versus nids several times in 6th and I was smoked once in 2k points and won the rest ...all competitive lists (multitervy/nidzillas)...

Here is what works for me:
Noise marines can overwhelm the little bugs
Autocannons wail on the big bugs, they are cheapest on 5 man havoc squads...but the autopred isn't a bad value
Lots of rhinos...I've rhino walled several times
Plasma...Havocs are cheapest here too...
Sorcerers...that Force weapon is a bug killer...so the Termy armor will help, if the bug hits on smashes you are probably done anyway, so the best thing to do is go 2k points and duel HQ the sorcerers...and have them attack the same bug every round possible
Terminators are good value against the big bugs...but crap against the little ones...tacticly good though
Cultists...they actually do well at holding your line with one fearless HQ in the mix...they shoot so much in a 20 man squad it is silly
Heldrakes are pretty good against bugs due to the volume of targets, and could draw a flyrant from more devastating destruction
Raptors show a bit of promise with the plasma/flamer combo...but they would basically be throw away points
Oblits are a wash really...their versatility makes them appealing
All the other armor is mostly trash for the bugs
Talons may be able to take a big bug...but then they are dead
Regular CSMs are tarpits...plague marines are tarpits as well, but at least they can wound the big bugs...khorne berserkers are OK, but will take 2 assault phases to kill a gaunt squad, and get eaten by genestealers...chosen, spawn and mutilators would get overwhelmed

Basically if you had unlimited resources to build a list to defeat 'nids it isn't hard...but you lose some well-roundedness

 zephoid wrote:
Tau have the iridium battlesuit commander with drone controller with a squad of 10 marker drones making them all bs5. Yeah, good luck with killing that until your army is dead.

The problem is that tyranids turned from a high-skill army to a skill-capped army. After a certain point, it doenst matter how good you are. Once you have target priorities down, it all comes down to did you roll the right powers. Everyone knows exactly what a nid player will be doing. Advancing, crapping out gaunts, trying to get in assault, and flying some tyrants around. Thats because thats all nids can do at this point. Not even the 4th eldar codex in 6th was this limited.

Precision shots from Flyrants and Biovores mean that killing the Markerdrone/Commander squad isn't that hard. And staying out of a Flyrants threat range basically means theyre out of range to hurt my army. Last time I saw the Commander/drones I killed all 10 in the first turn.

Tyranids are certainly limited, but tactics still play a major role in the army. Coordinating reserves, holding back until the right moment, adapting to your opponent... No army that is so focused on the movement phase could be called lacking in Tactics. Theyr still have plenty of threats to hurt the enemy with, even if he thinks he knows what you're doing.

Hell drake lists work great vs the tev list . 2 drakes will deal with a tev in 1 turn don't forget that when they go boom they take out a lot of termy's close by . The Doom hates cover stay out of the open till he's dead.

 aceface wrote:
Hell drake lists work great vs the tev list . 2 drakes will deal with a tev in 1 turn don't forget that when they go boom they take out a lot of termy's close by . The Doom hates cover stay out of the open till he's dead.

Waitaminute. How do Heldrakes deal with Tervigons exactly? Vector strike is unreliable at best, and with Iron arm can become worthless. Baleflamer has, at best, a 50% shot at a wound without FnP or IA... Plus, they won't be able to Vector strike them the turn they come in unless your opponents made a big mistake... and Flyrants absolutely murder Heldrakes.

Tyranids aren't actually an assault army at their best. They're a board control army. With the essential elements being scoring Tervigons and 2 Flyrants.

Beyond this, you might find Zoanthropes for synapse and more psychic powers and/or Biovores for long range, no LOS dakka. Some people use a couple Trygons and the Doom in a Pod.

Even the more assault-oriented units like Trygons work only because they pin the enemy back while the Bug player swarms objectives with Tervigons and Gants. Ditto Doom, or Biovores (literally, pinning).

Drop Pod armies can do very well against bugs. Space Wolves drop in with good psychic defense, counter-attack, good ol' bolters and plasma. Even vanilla space marines with Sternguard spam can beat this list.

The point is, to beat this list you have to think counter-intuitively. You actually want to close with this list. Get into rapid-fire range. Select your combats. Because if you let them pin you back in your deployment zone, you'll eventually dig yourself out but there will be a Tervigon and 30ish gants on every objective.

 The Shrike wrote:
Tyranids aren't actually an assault army at their best. They're a board control army. With the essential elements being scoring Tervigons and 2 Flyrants.

Beyond this, you might find Zoanthropes for synapse and more psychic powers and/or Biovores for long range, no LOS dakka. Some people use a couple Trygons and the Doom in a Pod.

Even the more assault-oriented units like Trygons work only because they pin the enemy back while the Bug player swarms objectives with Tervigons and Gants. Ditto Doom, or Biovores (literally, pinning).

Drop Pod armies can do very well against bugs. Space Wolves drop in with good psychic defense, counter-attack, good ol' bolters and plasma. Even vanilla space marines with Sternguard spam can beat this list.

The point is, to beat this list you have to think counter-intuitively. You actually want to close with this list. Get into rapid-fire range. Select your combats. Because if you let them pin you back in your deployment zone, you'll eventually dig yourself out but there will be a Tervigon and 30ish gants on every objective.

there have been a slew of threads about the tervinids list. i play chaos space marines. i recently sat around with a dry erase board recently and drew out, eventually, these tactics. i played against a tervinid list and actually won. the key to tervinids is getting as close as plausible deniability. you want to be able to rapid fire and retrieve objectives first. i also pay for raptors and possessed. i make them sound scary and use them to harass and keep his assault troops busy. then once they die, as they always do, my troops have moved into position, protected on the flanks by vehicles (LR and predator). i hold the minimum possible objectives and shoot the $%^* out of everything.

CSM: As much as I hate to say it, helldrakes own the crap outta tervigons. Beyond that, any kind of good shooting will down the bastards and you can just use your troops to easily kill the little guys. Throw some MOT possessed at the swarmlord and tie him up for most of the game.

Orks: Can kill the little guys no problem, so these aren't an issue. Killa kans are a cheap solution for taking out tervigons, I recommend them.

Eldar: Dark reapers do a number on anything nid, as does pretty much anything due to bladestorm. Just use your guys intelligently.

Necrons: While you have some chance in melee, just take the fools down with some good old nercon shooty. Tesla or immortal gauss works great, destroyers will set the enemy back hard, and tomb spiders are the hidden gem of the army. Also scarabs, because a fearless ball of guys you can add more guys to keeps the swarmlord in daycare.

and SM: You've got the shooting power, TH/SS termies, and all the other tools you need.


All of these armies can have a balanced list that will do well against everything including tervi spam.

jifel wrote:

 aceface wrote:
Hell drake lists work great vs the tev list . 2 drakes will deal with a tev in 1 turn don't forget that when they go boom they take out a lot of termy's close by . The Doom hates cover stay out of the open till he's dead.

Waitaminute. How do Heldrakes deal with Tervigons exactly? Vector strike is unreliable at best, and with Iron arm can become worthless. Baleflamer has, at best, a 50% shot at a wound without FnP or IA... Plus, they won't be able to Vector strike them the turn they come in unless your opponents made a big mistake... and Flyrants absolutely murder Heldrakes.

Just use the drakes on the tervigons without iron arm/endurance up. Bound to fail a psy test eventually and there's only a 50/50 or so of even getting Iron arm. Use your missiles/lascannons/melta-guns/combi-weapons/plague marines or your Black mace winged prince to smite the hell out of the Iron arm tervigons/tyrants.

juraigamer wrote:CSM: As much as I hate to say it, helldrakes own the crap outta tervigons. Beyond that, any kind of good shooting will down the bastards and you can just use your troops to easily kill the little guys. Throw some MOT possessed at the swarmlord and tie him up for most of the game.

Orks: Can kill the little guys no problem, so these aren't an issue. Killa kans are a cheap solution for taking out tervigons, I recommend them.

Eldar: Dark reapers do a number on anything nid, as does pretty much anything due to bladestorm. Just use your guys intelligently.

Necrons: While you have some chance in melee, just take the fools down with some good old nercon shooty. Tesla or immortal gauss works great, destroyers will set the enemy back hard, and tomb spiders are the hidden gem of the army. Also scarabs, because a fearless ball of guys you can add more guys to keeps the swarmlord in daycare.

and SM: You've got the shooting power, TH/SS termies, and all the other tools you need.

All of these armies can have a balanced list that will do well against everything including tervi spam.

I'd discourage killakans against tervigons personally. They don't really have enough attacks, and the tervigon will be swinging S10 attacks via smash. Point for point, sure, Kans will win, but who's letting multiple (if ANY) Kans into combat with a tervigon? That's what gaunt screens are for. The tervigon will then munch the kans 1 at a time.

Most of my experience playing Nids is with CSM. After getting routinely crushed for a few months by a friend's list, I started to have some success by bringing my own MCs.

The bloodthirster is fantastic for putting down other MCs. If he gets buffed by a sorcerer to be invisible he's also very difficult to shoot down.

Heldrakes do well against flyrants if the flyrants advance too far up the board. Two of them vector striking one flyrant have a good chance to put him down, unless he has iron arm. Even if the flyrant stays back to prevent being hit, I'm affecting your board position.

Also, I've found that although a horrible idea in a regular game, spreading out works well against Nids. They rely on synergy between units and do poorly when forced to split up to chase your units.

However, in an objectives game if the Nids get the right powers and the Tervigons don't run out of babies, Nids are very tough.

bogalubov wrote:

Also, I've found that although a horrible idea in a regular game, spreading out works well against Nids. They rely on synergy between units and do poorly when forced to split up to chase your units.

GENIUS how did i never think of it?! you can force... uh... dis-synapse?... but anyway, forcing his units to choose their target (much like i'm doing) incredibly carefully can wrench some of the board control away from them dang grubby 'nids

Lol my daemon flying circus loves munching in these kind of lists.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Lol my daemon flying circus loves munching in these kind of lists.

Your daemon flying circus is a joke to most Terv lists.. Tying all your points into very few models that can be easily tarpitted is a Nids dream.