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So this last weekend I had a tournament where a teammate and I had to create a list of 3000 points, where both my teammate and I were given 1500 points and we each had to bring at min. 1 HQ and 2 troops. We did well during the first rounds, but the last round we were up against 2 tyranid players. These tyranid players both brought all fmcs in both their fast attack and also in their HQ slots, they also the data slate that let them bring even more fast attack slots. In a single turn they managed to wreck all 4 of my flyers and both of my annihilation barges in a single turn by using the haywire weapons that all of their flyers seem to have and also the vector striking.

My question of the week is with a Necron list how can I beat an all flying monstrous creature list, when against their haywire weapons I can get no save and regular models do not seem to be able to do much because I still need to roll 6s to hit and then either 5 or 6s to wound.

Any advice would be welcome, Tyranids with all fmcs in my opinions still seems to be an extremely tough list.

They have to have something in the troops slot and a bunch of gargoyles for that list to be legal.

You still get a jink save vs haywire.

If they are both using a skyblight formation, you're in for an extremely tough game.

I think your best bet would be having lots of flyers and some way to insure they arrive on T2. Not sure how feasible that is for what you own, but I don't think that Necrons have that much skyfire aside from their own flyers.

You should also consider Imotekh as Tyranids have a lot of models that would make themselves lightning bait.

Also, against Tyranids; go all out on Tesla. Don't even consider Gauss weapons if you can get more Tesla weapons. You can't penetrate their armor save anyway so you may as well try to get as many hits on them as possible.

My list was 4 nightscythes each with warriors inside, 2 annhilation barges and some wraiths. All my fliers came in t2 and what they did was just vector strike my fliers and then use their haywire missiles to kill the barges and according to them since the haywire is an effect no save is allowed. Also according to them tesla could not arc to any other fmc and if shooting at a fmc then it cannot arc to anything else. It was the skyblight and they had a venomthrope and that was giving them all the saves in the world.

oz of the north wrote:
My list was 4 nightscythes each with warriors inside, 2 annhilation barges and some wraiths. All my fliers came in t2 and what they did was just vector strike my fliers and then use their haywire missiles to kill the barges and according to them since the haywire is an effect no save is allowed. Also according to them tesla could not arc to any other fmc and if shooting at a fmc then it cannot arc to anything else. It was the skyblight and they had a venomthrope and that was giving them all the saves in the world.

You of course; should nuke the Venomthrope quickly. It's not a particularly durable model.

I would have to say the arc bit is wrong. Prior to the FAQ on lord or storm, I could see them saying no... but hit attacks hit flyers we play that they hit flyers too...

Crons do have issues with cover.. so getting that venom down is key..

Playing the flyer game you really have a couple of choices.. it mostly depends on what turn order you get.. Crones do TL their missiles on flyers so you don't want to be on the board if you can avoid it... 3 ABs... flat out 12... ( who cares you need 6s anyway) Telsa should be putting a beating on a crone or harpy for that matter. ( which there would have had to be 4 of them in that game if they did dbl skyblight). Needless to say, you want a way to get yoru birds in and focus the crones... the harpys vs is a joke compared to the crones and it can't shoot your flyers either. 4 to 6 Telsa destructors should wreck the crones... and they do need to wreck them.

oz of the north wrote:
My list was 4 nightscythes each with warriors inside, 2 annhilation barges and some wraiths. All my fliers came in t2 and what they did was just vector strike my fliers and then use their haywire missiles to kill the barges and according to them since the haywire is an effect no save is allowed. Also according to them tesla could not arc to any other fmc and if shooting at a fmc then it cannot arc to anything else. It was the skyblight and they had a venomthrope and that was giving them all the saves in the world.

Haywire causes glancing and penetrating hits... you get saves against glancing and penetrating hits. I think they cheated with that if you had a cover save available. Also, there is no rules support for tesla not being able to arc from a flyer.

I believe tesla arcing causes automatic hits, which zooming flyers/swooping FMC are normally immune to (as they can only be hit by snap shots).

Just had a quick look through the necron faq, but didn't see anything on this.

Arson Fire wrote:
I believe tesla arcing causes automatic hits, which zooming flyers/swooping FMC are normally immune to (as they can only be hit by snap shots).

Just had a quick look through the necron faq, but didn't see anything on this.

Right, but he said that they didn't allow Tesla to arc FROM the FMC to other units. This is false.

This is probably the FAQ they were talking about:

"Q: How do maelstroms, novas and beams – or indeed any weapon
that doesn’t need to roll To Hit or hits automatically – interact with
Zooming Flyers and Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures? (p13)
A: Only Snap Shots can hit Zooming Flyers and Swooping
Flying Monstrous Creatures. Therefore, any attacks that use
blast markers, templates, create a line of/area of effect or
otherwise don’t roll to hit cannot target them. This includes
weapons such as the Necron Doom Scythe’s death ray or the
Deathstrike missile of the Imperial Guard, and psychic
powers that follow the rule for maelstroms, beams, and
novas."

The venomthrope he put in a bastion and with most of my army being tesla I was unable to do anything about it and my few units of gauss were in my flyers

oz of the north wrote:
The venomthrope he put in a bastion and with most of my army being tesla I was unable to do anything about it and my few units of gauss were in my flyers

Yeah, venom in a bastion is rough. JY has a battle report somewhere of necrons vs skyblight. I don't remember the results but you might find some insight there.

What was your partner running? getting glances or pens on that building and the venom is likely to die inside it.. but it does need to go down... Can't have it casting shroud around it the whole time.

I would be interested in getting a better look at their list. If you run skyblight with 3 Flyrants min gant units.. at 1500 you can't afford a 2nd crone... What were they running as HQs?

Either way, Telsa is going to hit them about the same.. they have 4+ saves.. even if they some how kept them close to the venom their saves should have been about the same...

My partner was running screamerstar with 2 units of plaguebearers. I am pretty sure my opponent was running 2 flyrants and a bunch of harpies/crones and skyblight with a full unit of termagants to unlock tervigons as troops and the skyblight.

Just a quick calculation based on OP (not saying he was right or wrong)

2 Flyrants, plus 3 FMCs in FA plus Skyblight comes to (at a minimum) 1610 points. This does not include upgrades or minimum Troops.

I have a feeling they did not take 3 FMCs in their FA slots, meaning you were looking at 1205 to start. Venomthrope in a bastion brings the army up to 1325 points with no upgrades or Troop selections.

I suspect there are some very liberal rules interpretations going on here, so I'll clarify a few things that may be useful:

1) The Venomthrope gives the Shrouded USR to units within 6" of that bastion (Shrouded is +2 to cover saves, giving at least a 5+ save). Thanks to the size of FMCs, it's going to be virtually impossible to keep many of them near that bastion, so just focus down the ones more than 6" away. That range is also measured to the base, not the wings (BRB pg4).

2) If you can hit any of the fire points on the bastion with a template weapon, the Venomthrope inside will take D6 hits from it with Ignores Cover, bypassing Shrouded. Also any glances on the building will inflict a wound on the Venomthrope with Ignores Cover. As it only has 5+ armour, you shouldn't need too many of these.

3) You are absolutely allowed to take any invulnerable or cover (jink) saves against Haywire attacks. Also note that Crones only carry 4 of these Haywire missiles, firing up to two per turn. Keep track per Crone, because once all four missiles are gone that's it.
Using a vector strike counts as a shooting attack, so if they do they can only fire one missile that turn.

4) Flying Hive Tyrants are able to take a Haywire attack, but as this is template-based it cannot be used against flyers. If the Hive Tyrant is swooping, the weapon can't be used at all as you can't snap fire template weapons.

 xttz wrote:
If the Hive Tyrant is swooping, the weapon can't be used at all as you can't snap fire template weapons.

The Hive Tyrant can opt to not Skyfire, meaning it doesn't have to Snap fire at ground targets.

In my opponents list they were taking in 3000 points 2 flyrants with the haywire templates 4 fmcs in FA, 2 tervigons with full 30 model squads of termagants a carnifex brood, the skyblight formation.

In my and my teammates list we had 2 squads of plague bearers a screamerstar, squad of pink horrors, 6 wraiths, 2 annihilation barges, 4 nightscythes with 2 having D&D and 2 having warriors with voltaic staffs, Nemesor Zhandrekh with a squad of warriors. We went first it was vanguard strike and night fighting, first turn I moved my annihilation barges to get in range fired my tesla and took 3 wounds off of a harpy and never arced. Second turn they flew with all of their flyers and killed the barges with all haywire and stated that since it was haywire I was unable to get a jink. The next turn all of my reserves came in and tesla from night scythes took 1 crone down to 1 wound (he made 5 out of 9 saves). They then vector struck all my nightscythes with the crones which and killed all of them.

At this point I had to go because of previous commitments and one of my opponents was a person who no one generally enjoyed playing against because he constantly brings downright broken lists even to friendly games and will rules lawyer until the cows come home and you just give up caring because you know he is bending the rules to his own means. Just as an example he said that a fmc could start flying again during the combat consolidation because it was considered a movement.

He was making up rules. Sorry you had a bad game :/. Do you have a TO that will help out in these cases?

oz of the north wrote:
In my opponents list they were taking in 3000 points 2 flyrants with the haywire templates 4 fmcs in FA, 2 tervigons with full 30 model squads of termagants a carnifex brood, the skyblight formation.

Aside from the whole making up rules thing...

1 Flyrant with haywire = 205 (assuming dual scytals which is the worst build ever)
2 FMCs in FA = 310
Tervigon + tax = 315
Dakkafex = 150

Total = 980.

Skyblight is a Flyrant, Harpy, 2 Crones, 30 Gargs (minimum) = 820 points. 980 + 980 + 820 is 2780.
Venomthrope + Bastion is 45 + 75 = 120, bringing us to 2900 points. This is with literally no upgrades and assuming that the TO allowed them to split the cost of the Skyblight between them.
Flyrant + Terv+tax + 1 Crone + Skyblight = 855 + 820 which is more than 1500.

I am not really versed with the dataslates, since all my armies are from 5th edition, but do they allow you to break force organization?

Yes - they're an extra detachment that you "add on".