Tyranids!

Hey guys

Played against Tyranids for the first time last weekend and it didnt go so well.. I had no idea what to really expect, I knew it was a cc army with lots of aliens!

They seem to have a lot of nasty surprises.. They had some shooters which ignore cover save and jink, most of our skimmers depends on that to help them survive. That was surprise 1!

I kinda knew that they had something that could spawn new zergs of some kind, but didnt knew it was so many at a timem 3d6 extra a turn, until they roll a double, dang! He had 2 of them and they have psychic powers.. wunderbar! Surprise 2. And the powers of course have very little chance of failing. He could debuff one of my units or buff himself with d3 S, T and make him eternal warrior!!

Termagants have poison attacks in cc.. Mental note, remember that! Charged a Talos into a group of them, big mistake.. Know your enemy better.. but surprise 3!

The Hive Tyrant!! How the hell do you kill that?? I charged it with Vect and 5 Incubi, but he had an ability so I hit last.. He was buffed with d3 S,T and eternal warrior, and have a save 2, with 6 S and T before the buff. Luckily Vect has a poison weapon that allows him to hit on 3+, but with a save of 2, I only managed to wound it once. Incubi died in first round, Vect survived 22 saves on Shadowfield before he failed 1 and was slain to instant death to high S after 3 full rounds of fighting. Surprise 4!!
Vect and Incubi did slay some huge beast before the Hive Tyrant was there.

I asked my opponent if he had any long range attacks and he said no (had no idea what his units could do and didnt feel like going through his book to find out), but he forgot to mention some artillery he had in the background... Dont trust your opponent in a friendly game! Surprise 5!

Anyway, it was first time I met Tyranids and havent spend much time studying them.

Could use any useful tips or tactics on how to deal with them.

Thanks!

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The Hive Tyrant!! How the hell do you kill that??

Shoot him with poison dead. That goes to the rest of Nid army. Fire Lances at Tervigons. Nid against DE generally considered almost impossible match up, so powerfull is DE superiority. Only Flying Tyrants kinda have chances.

Anyway - new Tyranid codex is in January, so any advice you get here might be out of date very soon.

But right now - shoot them with poison.

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Vect and Incubi did slay some huge beast before the Hive Tyrant was there.

Vect shouldnt charge Tyrant in the first place. Rule of thumb - shoot the choppy ones, chop the shooty ones. I rarely see 2+ Tyrant actually, well, almost never. People tend to always take Wings.

Ok, lets start from the top:

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They seem to have a lot of nasty surprises.. They had some shooters which ignore cover save and jink, most of our skimmers depends on that to help them survive. That was surprise 1!

These things are called Hive Guard, and are tyranid's only good shooting unit. Take them out first at all costs. If you dont, you will feel the pain real quick. They only have a 24" range, so max range is 30" inches (unless they use a trick, which I will go over later). So just stay out of their range or kill them, and you should be fine.

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I kinda knew that they had something that could spawn new zergs of some kind, but didnt knew it was so many at a timem 3d6 extra a turn, until they roll a double, dang! He had 2 of them and they have psychic powers.. wunderbar! Surprise 2. And the powers of course have very little chance of failing. He could debuff one of my units or buff himself with d3 S, T and make him eternal warrior!!

These things are called Tervigons, and are their best HQ choice (but can also be troops if they take a tervigaunt squad). The Psy powers though make them expensive, and unless they take their book lore powers, have to roll on a chart. So he wont always have those powers because of how random they are. These die to poison as they only have a 3+ save. Just shoot them and you will be fine.

As for that trick I was talking about earlier. Tervigons have a book lore power that allows a unit to shoot and run in the same phase. So a Hive Guard max range is actually 36" (6" move + D6" run + 24" range gun), but as he showed you most people drop these powers for biomancy rolls.

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Termagants have poison attacks in cc.. Mental note, remember that! Charged a Talos into a group of them, big mistake.. Know your enemy better.. but surprise 3!

I would actually love to see people with these. That means those termaguants are expensive and they have less on the field. But yeah always ask to see an opponents army list and always ask questions. Dont blindly charge into things not knowing what they can do in combat. Thats just bad playing.

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The Hive Tyrant!! How the hell do you kill that?? I charged it with Vect and 5 Incubi, but he had an ability so I hit last.. He was buffed with d3 S,T and eternal warrior, and have a save 2, with 6 S and T before the buff. Luckily Vect has a poison weapon that allows him to hit on 3+, but with a save of 2, I only managed to wound it once. Incubi died in first round, Vect survived 22 saves on Shadowfield before he failed 1 and was slain to instant death to high S after 3 full rounds of fighting. Surprise 4!!

Hive Tyrants normally are flying. If they are on ground just poison away their tyrant guard (he did take some right???) and then lance him to death. Never assault a tyrant unless you know you are going to win. Also Incubi are made to kill MEQ models (marine equivilant). Anything higher T than 4 and they fail miserably, that was just bad target priority on your part.

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I asked my opponent if he had any long range attacks and he said no (had no idea what his units could do and didnt feel like going through his book to find out), but he forgot to mention some artillery he had in the background... Dont trust your opponent in a friendly game! Surprise 5!

These are biovores and are actually a really bad choice for Nids. I wouldnt worry about them too much. Yeah they give him some long range shooting, but its nothing huge. Just shoot them up once everything else is dead. Also remind him he must test for lurking if there are no synapse creatures near them (people always seem to "forget" that)

Hmm thanks

I still have a lot to learn. I dont feel like spending a lot of time studying over codex's to know what they can do and what they cant do yet. I play the opponent and get a feel for what the army can do. I know my opponents once in awhile "forget" things, because I dont know their codex yet.
I am still getting a feel for the Dark Eldar army and getting to know the units, what I can expect from them. So sometimes I just charge something to see how they do. I know its bad playing but as long as I learn from my mistakes, then I am satisfied. I enjoy playing WH40K even though I lose most of my games and hopefully I will get better and better..

Using this forums and asking for help from more experienced players help a lot and reading what works for other ppl. Thanks for the replies! Next time I will crush the Tyranid svarm!! Hopefully...

Gotta remember this one "Rule of thumb - shoot the choppy ones, chop the shooty ones."

goofydk wrote:

Hmm thanks


Gotta remember this one "Rule of thumb - shoot the choppy ones, chop the shooty ones."

Chargeing Incubi to Hive Guard is still a bad idea. Exception proves the rule!

I'd suggest watching battle report videos on youtube, I've found them incredibly useful! Both miniwargaming and team0comp have quite a lot of battles involving tyranids. The miniwargaming ones can be more entertaining but have A LOT more rules inaccuracies, so team0comp might be the better option for getting a feel for other armies and their abilities. The team0comp battles are often fought with tournament practice in mind, or to show how a new army fares against an old one, and they also upload tricks and tactics videos. They rarely get the rules wrong, so are really helpful for seeing exactly what everything does.

You'll hear them mentioning what happens if you manage to kill a Tervigon (the big spawning monsters) too. It explodes, and fries the brains of any of its offspring within 6" (I think). Always funny!  

As a Tyranid player (well, Skaven-counts-as), I'd agree with everything Shadow's Revenge said, but add a few points:
Termagants get free poison attacks if they are within 6" of a Tervigon which has the poison upgrade, and also the Furious Charge upgrade. We don't upgrade the little'uns, we upgrade their Mum!
The point Shadow made about brain frying is VERY IMPORTANT: kill the Tervigon, and most of the nearby babies die, and the rest will probably fail a morale test and break.

Tyranids only have one build now: Tervigons are awesome, most will be upgraded to 3 powers, then roll on Biomancy until they get Iron Arm. Flyrants for anti-air, HiveGuard for anti-armour.

Don't discount the threat from Biovores: 48" barrage, as an assault weapon, so they can move 6" then fire; 3 pieplates at S4, I frequently take out half a Longfang/Devastator/Lanceborn squad in turn one, and they usually get me First Blood. Being barrage, they can snipe a special of sergeant too.

Buy lots of venoms. Splinterborn etc.

Castle up your army in the corner.

Fire away. you win. he loses.

We are actually the most effective army against tyranids because he relies upon monsterous creatures. our poison ignores that.

Thanks for the tactics on here. Had my first ever game against 'nids. Killed the flyrant and a tervigon on t1 .it went downhill for him from here on in! Slaughter for me, he threw in the towel on t3 when the last of his synapse went down to poison and lances

I'm matching up vs basically exclusively 'Nids in my home-brew Planetary Empires campaign, and when I attack I'll be 500pts behind him. That said, by taking advantage of our superior range and mobility, I'm honestly not worried.
One thing I did to help focus my mind for the matchup is to math hammer out the approximate # of poison shots necessary to drop each particular unit, be it a flyrant (36 after he drops to the ground, less if he's wounded by the grounding) or a mob of 20 gargoyles (60 shots). This, coupled with a simple read-over of their codex, lets me figure out which of my resources to allocate where. And more importantly, in which order.
Flyrants and gargoyles are fast moving threats, so those go first. Next we've got tervigons spawning more mobs and zoanthropes blasting our boats out of the sky, shoot 'em before they're in their 24-6=18" range. After that, the ONLY thing I'm at all scared of is the Trygon Prime I'll be facing. But all it can really do is show up and destroy one Raider/Venom, before I can point the rest of my army at it. If I'm lucky, it'll fall for the bait of 5 wyches sitting on an objective and leave my boats alone.

It's about breaking the tyranid force down into manageable chunks, determining what your priorities are, then focusing them down one at a time.

I agree with the above, our army is made to kill 'nids. They have no answer to our poison and even their best units don't get armor saves against our lances. They will eventually fail the 3+ and 4+ rolls and our AP5 poison kills the troops without a save.

Just stay away and shoot at range.

If they bring a doom, take that out with SC's or just stay away from it. Our mobility makes it a poor choice against us, while it can crush slow moving armies.