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I've got my first game with my Grey Knights against Tyranids tomorrow, 1300 points, and I'm wondering if I could get some pointers.

Here's my list (can't change unfortunately, as this is everything I own):
Level 3 librarian, will roll on Divination and Telepathy
Level 3 librarian with Liber, will roll on Sanctic (I'd love to get cleansing flame, sanctuary, gate of infinity and of course vortex)
5 terminators, with one hammer and one psycannon
5 terminators, with one hammer and one psycannon
5 terminators, with one hammer and one psycannon
Dreadknight with personal teleporter, hammer (no points for sword), heavy psycannon and heavy incinerator
Stormraven with lascannons and multi melta

Here's my main questions:
- With Tyranids being assault focused, should I forgo deepstriking and form a gun line and be prepared to counter attack? I'm thinking that deepstriking in just allow myself to be assaulted by my opponent is a bad idea.
- Should I run the stormraven empty or put a terminator unit in it.
- Should I put both librarians in one squad to create a death star (as I usually would), especially if I'm lucky and my warlord rolls Invisibility.
- Any other advice on facing Tyranids?

Thanks guys

what's he running? swarm, or flyrant/MC spam?

Not sure I'm afraid. I'd assume a mix of big gribblies and small gribblies, though I don't really know much about Tyranids - except that Force will probably be my friend. Should I do different things depending on what kind of army he will take? I'm sure it'll all be generally assault based.

Go for the big ones first! Always works out well for me when I fight the bugs.

The only true threat of Tyranids against you is Flying Hive Tyrants. Use your Stormraven to handle those threats. You can run it empty or not, the only real danger is Warp Blast to shoot it down. If the Hive Tyrants dont roll that power, then the unit inside is relatively safe. They can glance you down with their guns so be careful there.

Use your Dreadknight to try to get into combat with the bigger MCs, Tervigon, etc. With Force you will decimate them. Even a Carnifex brood will die easily.

I would avoid a Death Star since the swarm is effectively fearless. You could get bogged down in waves of expendable gaunts while they get objectives.

You out shoot and out fight Tyranids, just be careful as your model count is much lower than theirs. Using only Elites like Terminators runs you the risk of dying to bad rolls (1's).

Any ideas what he is running?

Mission is important here too, you'll probably be outclassed in Maelstrom.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You'll probably want ML/AC on the stormraven too. No heavy armour to defeat.

If you're able to alter your list slightly, trade those Psycannons for Psilencers. Against most foes the Psycannons will serve you well, but ranged Instant Death, even on a S4 package, is particularly effective against Tyranids.

Thanks for the tips so far guys. I guess the real question now is do I run a nemesis strike force and deep strike in, and risk getting assaulted, or do I run a CAD and deploy all my terminators and play defensively?

Strong tyranid lists are shooting focused, rather than assault.
Perhaps surprisingly, most tyranids are not actually amazing in assault. They get by with just being 'kinda decent, I guess', while their shooting units get the work done.
Gaunts will tarpit you for days, and might eventually wear you down through weight of numbers. But your terminators will beat the stuffing out of most medium or large sized bugs they get into combat with.

Definitely put a terminator unit in the stormraven. Unless he has multiple flyrants/hive crones engaging it, he won't have much capable of shooting it down.

I think you need to be a bit aggressive, or he will just sit on objectives while his flyrants flap around and slowly whittle you down.

Roll your Sanctic powers first, if you don't get Cleansing Flame, roll for it with the other Librarian too. It should do wonders against nids, flying or otherwise. Novas hit everything automatically.

Then again you have Stormraven so it might be overkill, not sure about that.

Yeah don't Deep Strike have that guaranteed gun line, also don't deploy all the way forward, you will generally have greater range then that majority of his force

Best advice I can think of is target all synapse first. Once that's all gone his army should mostly just eat itself.

Any nid player worth a damn will have so much redundant synapse that if you focus fire on his synapse creatures all of his other actual threats will run rampant and cripple you. Gunning for synapse first only works if the nid player lets it work by building his list crappy.

As stated, nids are mostly a mid range shooting army. But there are actually a few ways to play them that are casually viable with very different counters. Hard to give suggestions without seeing his/her list.

 Lance845 wrote:
Any nid player worth a damn will have so much redundant synapse that if you focus fire on his synapse creatures all of his other actual threats will run rampant and cripple you. Gunning for synapse first only works if the nid player lets it work by building his list crappy.

As stated, nids are mostly a mid range shooting army. But there are actually a few ways to play them that are casually viable with very different counters. Hard to give suggestions without seeing his/her list.

Well it depends on the list.. Horde lists can be crippled by Synapes sniping, But Flyrant lists don't care about synapse generally...

Have to remind GK player to watch out for the Flyrant with Psychic Scream, decent Nids list (like having 5 Flyrant) will have around the same Warp dice as GK. So if fail to deny that, it may cause havoc due to you being -2 Ld with shawdows of the warp.

Unfortunately the game was a bit of a slaughter! He brought all big gribblies, with no model at less than 3 wounds, who had a higher initiative and large number of AP2 attacks, so were wiping out whole squads of terminators before they even got to swing. Against a couple of them my swords (without hammerhand) and storm bolters couldn't wound them as they were T8, so my army was really reduced to three hammers, three psycannons and a dreadknight.

It certainly was an experience, a cool army though and a nice guy.

JamesWright83 wrote:
Unfortunately the game was a bit of a slaughter! He brought all big gribblies, with no model at less than 3 wounds, who had a higher initiative and large number of AP2 attacks, so were wiping out whole squads of terminators before they even got to swing. Against a couple of them my swords (without hammerhand) and storm bolters couldn't wound them as they were T8, so my army was really reduced to three hammers, three psycannons and a dreadknight.

It certainly was an experience, a cool army though and a nice guy.

T8? You mean he brought a Hierodule? Thats a GMC, the only T8 units are GMC, how many did he take? Those things ate 560pts each.

What else did he bring?

GK can have force and force kills really fast

 Amishprn86 wrote:

JamesWright83 wrote:
Unfortunately the game was a bit of a slaughter! He brought all big gribblies, with no model at less than 3 wounds, who had a higher initiative and large number of AP2 attacks, so were wiping out whole squads of terminators before they even got to swing. Against a couple of them my swords (without hammerhand) and storm bolters couldn't wound them as they were T8, so my army was really reduced to three hammers, three psycannons and a dreadknight.

It certainly was an experience, a cool army though and a nice guy.

T8? You mean he brought a Hierodule? Thats a GMC, the only T8 units are GMC, how many did he take? Those things ate 560pts each.

What else did he bring?

GK can have force and force kills really fast

Yeah think we need a bit more detail on what he took...

But the main thing to use against MC lists in the future is 'Force' pretty much your entire lists has it and kills MC's with ease

Also very few things should be hitting before your guys.. Tyranids MC's are not the fastest thing Hive Tyrant and Toxicrene being the exceptions

Yeah, as a Tyranid player I'd love to know what MULTIPLE T8 units he had...