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My buddy plays Nids. Lately he has been running 2 tervigons, a flyrant, biovores, zoeys,and some hive guard. I have been running tau.
My issue is that he pumps out so many termigaunts that I can't ignore them. Meanwhile, his MC's are moving in and are harder than heck to shoot down.
I ran last game:
Cadre Fireblade w/ 11 FW's
Etherial w/11 FW's
Riptide w/ stim injector
2 IonHeads
2 x 3 Crisis Suits with 2x fusion each (wantes to get them to the tervs, but failed)
10 Kroot with sniper rifles

1250 lists.

Even though it was a kill point game and I jumped to an early lead, I just didn't seem to have enough table space to keep away (hammer and anvil even).
I killed his biovores in turn 1, but I lost my Riptide off the table in turn 2. Other than that it was just wave after wave of Terrmies (50+), Is it just bad luck? Strats?

personaly id use BC's on crisis and riptide, it'll eat those MCs. overcharge ions should ID those guard, why cadre fireblade? and id use more FWs if you can find room for them or pathfinders

I think that Kroot would be better over the Firewarriors, since Kroot still wound the Iron Arm buffed MC on a 4+. Infiltrate them in well defended cover with proper back up to keep enemies off them and you can put so many wounds on his big bads that he won't be able to keep them running for long.

I think the stim injector is a bit excessive on the Riptide. I prefer just running one bare with an IA. It will still do good against a variety of threats.

The suits shouldn't all have double fusion, at least not without multi-trackers in a TAC list. I suggest running two suits with dual plasma and a third suit with dual fusion and multi-tracker. That way you can split anti-heavy infantry and anti-tank fire.

A few markerlights would go a LONG way in your list.
Maybe if you're bringing firewarriors you could bring in Darkstrider instead to give them effectively S6 weapons. Not necessary though and questionable at that low point value.

Your list suffers from having too many AP2/3 weapons without the ability to remove cover and too many BS3 shots without markers to buff BS.

personaly I disagree on the kroot, its 2 more points for the 4+ save and their gun can still benefit from the ethereal, but they will be effective against the monstrous creature, where the FW's will be better at small units.

as for the monstrous creatures I like the old PR and MP mix, and as suits auto come with MT just make one twin-linked. and the SI for the riptide is nice, but only if you can spare the points.

Stims on riptide is a waste of points. Its already an undesirable target, why spend 35pts to make it less desirable? i dont think he'd ever shoot at except right before a charge.

Also ditch the cadre. The odds of you standing still are pretty low, unless youre objective camping. Kinda wasted points. You dont have anywhere near enough FW to pull the castle-tau tactic, and this guy basically demands you do that (not saying its good either)

That Tyranid list doesn't really seem like it would be too big of a problem. All you have to do is make sure you pump out a high volume of shots. Ignore cover also works wonders against them as that's going to be the majority of their saves. So get long range spammers, a few flamers, and then just sit back and watch the Tyranids march to their death.

Things to look into:
Crisis suit with 2 flamers - Wall of death and a large template that will kill termigants faster than he can produce them. Place this in front of your army and you pretty much have an mobile wall that the Tyranids won't want to get close to.
HYMP Broadsides - Missiles outrange almost everything Tyranids have. When you take into account that broadsides also have Smart Missile Systems that ignore cover (Tyranids main form of defense) and you have fists full of death.
Kroot with sniper rounds - This is underrated IMHO. You have sniper rounds to focus and take out their MC's. But where they really shine is in melee. Park them in some forests/ruins for the cover and then never move. If the tervigants assault you then that's ok because you'll probably tie combat. They'd have to attack you at initative step 1 since they are charging through cover, meaning you'll actually go first for a change. To sweeten the pot all Kroot are AP 5 in CC.
Ethereal with mass Fire Warriors - You can't hold back on the Fire Warriors if you do this. The Ethereal can give you a ton of shots that will be able to deal with most things. If you combine them with Markerlights and then listen real close, you might actually be able to hear the termigants cry.
Skyray - It may not seem like much, but the Skyray can decimate most flyrants (assuming he didn't get lucky with his Biomancy powers). A Skyray can take out one of your main threats in one turn, or at least weaken it enough so that it can be easily picked off by something else.
Pathfinders - These guys can strip cover saves, Increase the BS of other spam happy units, and might even get lucky by grounding a flyrant with its markerlights. You certainly can't beat their price.
Sunshark Bomber - This may seem random but don't underestimate it. It can put out 3 blast templates per turn, is a flyer which Tyranids are weak against, adds another Skyfire Markerlight, and it can still fire its missile pod.
Finally there's the all mighty PEN chip - This beauty will give you monster hunter. Why is that good? If you destroy the synapse, then termigants can't charge you. Since most synaps creatures are MC's, this will just make sure they wont survive.

Terkul wrote:
If you destroy the synapse, then termigants can't charge you.

Ha! You have never seen my Leadership rolls. there is a reason I run psyker-heavy armies

Well I am normally on the other end of your troubles, I run Nids and he does a similar Tau.
Your list could use some tweaks but ultimately table space is your greatest weapon again 'nid hordes. Can trample what you cant step on. Keep as much space as you can and Don't be afraid to overcommit on killing that lead gaunt squad. Often he avoids shooting any of my MC's in favor of murdering 30 some gaunts. If some MC does murder a squad of Firewarriors or something then you can focus on shooting what is left.

Also be sure that any squad of fire warrior is close enough to 2 other squads for extra snapshots.

Thanks for the feedback.
I think my biggest issue is that I don't utilize markerlights and pathfinders well. I am going to try to add some in.
Another thing I have been thinking about is flamers. So you can put a MP, PR on a suit and stick a flamer on each. Before you say its not worth it, think of the repulser filed, at 10 only giving you d6 vs charge at 10 pts. So at 15 pts a squad I have wall of fire and templates for when they close in. Worth it?

 soundwave591 wrote:
personaly I disagree on the kroot, its 2 more points for the 4+ save and their gun can still benefit from the ethereal, but they will be effective against the monstrous creature, where the FW's will be better at small units.

as for the monstrous creatures I like the old PR and MP mix, and as suits auto come with MT just make one twin-linked. and the SI for the riptide is nice, but only if you can spare the points.

TL on one of the guns is way to expencive to be worth it, especially considering tau can boost up BS on the fly when they need it. If a person is dead set on filling all their slots with weapons, I usually sugest a flamer. Otherwise a Target lock is a godsend, especially if you start minmaxing your drone slots too.

BlackMath wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.
I think my biggest issue is that I don't utilize markerlights and pathfinders well. I am going to try to add some in.
Another thing I have been thinking about is flamers. So you can put a MP, PR on a suit and stick a flamer on each. Before you say its not worth it, think of the repulser filed, at 10 only giving you d6 vs charge at 10 pts. So at 15 pts a squad I have wall of fire and templates for when they close in. Worth it?

Be careful when you combine weapon types on Crisis squads. Yes both MP and PR are good, but they are also two conflating weapons. With PR you'll want to get close so you can get that oh so important double shot off. With MP you'll want to stay out of the range of PR's normal shots. Matters are made worse since PR is rapid fire you wont be able to charge afterwords while MP allows for this (I know it sounds like a dumb idea but sometimes its better to charge than to be charged). Just try to make sure that both weapons work well together.

Putting the flamer in an MP squad is that the weapons again compete against each other. A flamer can be useful for the wall of death, but putting them on a mobile crisis suit with long range MP isn't going to be that effective. The range of a flamer is about 8", meaning you'll have to be 24" closer than you want to be able to use the flamer. If you can, I would suggest creating a separate unit of Crisis Suits and sticking a Flamer on them (it could have only 1 or two). Or stick a flamer on a Crisis suit that would already want to be in the front. This way you can be in the right spot in order to use the flamer effectively.

TL on one of the guns is way to expencive to be worth it, especially considering tau can boost up BS on the fly when they need it. If a person is dead set on filling all their slots with weapons, I usually sugest a flamer. Otherwise a Target lock is a godsend, especially if you start minmaxing your drone slots too.

Markerlights can be useful as a TL substitute but look at the cost. The minimum cost of a markerlight is about 10+ points if you get good rolls and TLing a weapon costs about 5. Now markerlights affect an entire unit while TL is on a per model basis, however there's a lot of low model units. Also TL can be better than 1 increased BS in some situations (like gets hot). Finally there are some weapons out there that you just can't afford to miss with. For instance, when firing a Fusion Blaster you'll want to make sure it hits as you might not get another chance (being 8" away can be dangerous). So I wouldn't say that TL is useless.

But against nids a fusion blaster is almost useless. It dont double out the MC's, allot of things will still get an invuln, and its kinda expencive considering you can apply wounds almost on par with a set of missile pods.

Also, the flamer or target lock would be MUCH more useful if there are also a ton of small critters scurrying around.

Clarifying question: When you take a twin link does it count as 2 weapons when you fire, or just one weapon system. In other words, can I run a TL MP and a regular and fire both?

Also: He seems to get Iron Arms a whole lot and so his stuff is running around with even higher than 6 toughness, not to mention the endurance (buffs) and regens. Basically, if you don't kill it in one turn the MC will recover wounds or be way harder to kill the next turn. Maybe I have just had bad luck with his pycher rolls and tervigon rolls.

Even fusion blasters won't one shot most tyranid beasts in one go unfortunately.

Davou is right about Fusion Blasters being useless against anything that's not a vehicle. they have reduced range and only one shot so the only reason to take one is because it's melta. Unfortunately Tyranids don't have any vehicles so they are pretty much a waste against Tyranids.

For the record in case you didnt know, Tau can take 2 of the same weapon and not have them be twinlinked. I'd go either MP/MP or PR/PR not MP/PR - theres no point to anymore. Not even a cost difference lol.

Nidz and Daemons are probably the only race that doesnt care about fusion guns. Everything is either mass numbers or high toughness multi-wounded models. Yeah, it'll wound on a 2+ against anything without Iron Arm but its only 1 wound. You can kill MCs pretty fast if you mass fusions but then the swarms of gaunts will eat you alive lol. Warriors are the only model that i know of that can be pasted by anything less than S10 with multiple wounds, but who the hell uses warriors? lol

Flamer as a third weapon isnt a bad idea, especially if youre going plasma suits since theyre the most likely to get charged. However if you do that you give up Target Locks and that can be a god-send especially if you bring your gun drones, as they want to shoot infantry while plasmas want big stuff.

I know you can take 2 of the same weapon and have it not TL'ed. But I thought if you fired a TL weapon that it counted as your 2 weapon systems shots. Is that right?
In other words, could I take 2 missile pods, twin link them, then take an additional non-twin linked missile pod and fire both the 2 TL'ed ones and the one non-TL'ed one.

If you take a twin-linked missile pod, is a single weapon that counts as two for the purposes of buying systems. When it comes to shooting, it is a single weapon.

and now that EVERYONE said "fix your list" heres some tips. kill the tevigons especially if they are near termagants. the surrounding gants take a ton of extra wounds and start ignoring orders.

another thing that worked pretty well for me is splitting your FW into 6 man squads. this helps a lot vs assaulters since they kill less manz on a charge. This astually helps a lot vs FMCs like the flyrant becasue 6 FW shooting should get 1 hit and 1 hit = a grouding check. probably drop the fireblade and split the 11 man squads. havent tried sniper kroot on tyrannids yet but it sounds like itd be pretty strong minus the small loss of range.

Greetings as a longtime Nids player I will say that tau give me pretty much the hardest time save Eldar. What I have found is you need to worry about about 50+ t3 models and about 20 t6+ wounds over the course of the game. Simple math dictates what's required to do this.

I have started a tau army and some units you need we're mentioned skyray is amazing at taking out flyrants. I personally go with the farsight setup of suits for everything and 1-2 squads of dual flamer crisis suits will wreck his guants in no time.(and form a nice line he can't charge with his guants) Dual plasma suits or fusion just make sure to stay at long range. Finally a riptide which should be using the overcharge burst cannon (I think that's the one you know with 12 rending shots?). That combined with markerlights will absolutely ruin Nids day.

Most of the advise you have gotten from the others is sound and take it. Fire warriors are great and I generally think take 60 of them and then add more to lists. If you want a devout nid spaying list 60 Fw, ethereal, and the rest crisis suites with plas And a sky ray or 2 is basically the biggest hard counter you can arrange.

But beyond any list building advise I hope you listen to this before anything else. The biggest threat in the nids army is the tervigons. They are number one priority. The flyrant while seemingly devistating is merely a distraction thrown away to delay you while the tervigons advance and set a wall of guants between you and objectives...or to give them time to get to you. To this end skyray can knock a flyrent down easily. (Use or proxy if you don't have till you can get) otherwise my final piece of advise and this is most important is TARGET PRIORITY you must choose the most threatening targets and shoot the weapons designed to kill that threat untill it is dead. What I mean is pick a MC and pound it with as much as you can untill it's off the table because a 1w nid MC is literally just as effective ad a full wound one. And finally realize that fire warriors should almost always be shooting at guants and rarely if ever shoot at he MCs (s5 vs any MC is just a laughable waste) there may be an occasional exception to this but almost always remove a pack of guants a turn with a 10 man fire warrior squad.

Ps typing on my iPhone so pardons any typos or autocorrect failures.

The biggest thing i see is too much fusion! Put a BC or MP or PR on them, or maybe even a flamer. otherwise i think it comes down mostly to in game decisions and dice rolls.

Also, dont forget if he rolls doubles on any of his spawn dice that they stop birthing gaunts!