Help against deep striking Tyranids from hell

Ok fellow Archons, need some help with this one. I recently had a 1500 pt game against a Tyranid player and was tabled by turn 5. I actually managed to kill three quarters of his army, I was just scratching and crawling every turn. I felt he was in control the entire game. I have played Tyranids before and have never seen this list before. He told me that he stole it from the internet. I guess its a pretty successful tournament list

My list is somewhat of a all comers list. I play a lot of space marines in my meta so I plan accordingly. I dont have any coven units in my collections.
My Dark Eldar list: 1500pts

2 Archons with WWPs
3 Medusa in raider with 1 of the Archons

2 gun boats with splinter racks

2 Units of Blasterborn in raider. 1 goes with the other Archon

1 razorwing

3 ravagers with dark lances

His Tyranid list:1500pts 2 CADs

2 Flyrants with twin-linked brain somethings

6 Lictors

3 Mucolid Spore Clusters
Rippers that deep strike

2 Mawlocs

Then he had some Imperial fortification that had some Comms relay (he placed right next to it) that provides plus 1 to reserves so everything that comes in on reserve comes in on a 2+. It had like 4 Heavy Bolters on it I think and 4 Hull points. He had 2 Hive Guard inside of it. Then he surrounded the comms relay part of it by like 30 spore mines

The game was tons of fun, and it was a real challenge. Everything came in turn 2 for him and turn three he destroyed like 600pts of my army. A lot of damage was done by those Mucolid mines. By turn 5 he killed the last of my army with all he had left which was a full health Flyrant and 1 Lictor. (and all the spore mines and that comms thing) I left the Spore mines and comms relay alone completely. It didn’t have any effect against my army at all except for allowing his entire army to come in turn 2. My MVPs were all my strength 8 weapons. I instakilled a bunch of Lictors turn 2. Unfortunately had a lot of wasted wounds since those Lictors were one unit each. The Medusae were basically useless. I had most of my boats on top of buildings and ruins, which helped against the Mawlocs. The Mucolid Mines and Flyrants did the most damage to me.

Has anyone faced anything like this?

Deep Strike lists are a challenge if you aren't familiar.

The best thing Dark a Eldar can do is to Null Deploy with the aid of a Scalpel Squadron and let the first turn go to waste.

The basic premise of that list is what became known as lictor shame after the name the inventor registered under. It was designed to counter former tournament skimmer spam armies of the eldar variety among other things. Its a meta list. Obviously it works well here too.

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I dont have any coven units in my collections.

This contributed to his ability to dominate you btw. He is in essence the perfect counter to your list. I kinda like the irony of tyranids actually adapting correctly lol.

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The best thing Dark a Eldar can do is to Null Deploy with the aid of a Scalpel Squadron and let the first turn go to waste.

Typically this is true but in this case I really don't see null deployment doing squat to that strategy except forwarding it honestly. Its actually a board control list at its core. Edit- to elaborate he plays the same game only better because his list is optimized around it. Better to find a different strategy that doesn't have as much opportunity cost.

Anyway some tactics you can use in conjunction are terrain and MSU. Go high to make his locs less effective since they only hit ground level and don't give him value targets. Then have some counter assault in the form of durable units to survive his strikes better.
We are one of the few armies than can out MSU them so take advantage. Learn how the list functions.. remember his locs will scatter without lictor support and lictors are also there to shoot and assault things like jinkers. The mucs move super slow so you can take a turn to reposition from his army since once they've landed the force is mostly non mobile by comparison.

While I was playing against him, it did feel as if he had an answer to everything thing I have in my army. I like the idea of taking one turn to just move out of the way and repositioning. (Although the flyrants could easliy catch me?

What's a good tactic against the mucolid mines?

Nariaklizhar wrote:

What's a good tactic against the mucolid mines?

They are slow.... I mean REEEEALLY slow!! You can quite literally walk away from them at a leasurely pace. They halve all their movement, so it really shouldn't be too difficult.

I know that they can assault flyers. How does it work if I fly over them? Also what if I fly over them with a venom or raider? They explode right?

No, they only explode in base contact, meaning he will have to assault you, or you him. Remember he also halves his charge distance, so best case scenario for him, it moves 9" during a turn (3" movement, and 6" max charge)

What sigmaril said. The mucs are impotent for the most part, a distraction only since they can't even contest or score.

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2 Archons with WWPs
3 Medusa in raider with 1 of the Archons

2 gun boats with splinter racks

2 Units of Blasterborn in raider. 1 goes with the other Archon

1 razorwing

3 ravagers with dark lances

This list will need to adapt or you wont stand a chance. Get some disi cannons in there for one. Lose the lance spam. I'd argue to lose 1 archon and 1 blasterborn squad also. This leaves you plenty of pts and still has the option of wwp either the templates or the blasterborn whichever is more applicable to the game at hand. I'm talking all comers btw, not specifically tooling vs nids.

Anyway forcing jink on the flyrants even if snap shooting a disi or three goes a long way to making them feel over costed. Also your warrior boats will do well here too. I face 3-4 flyrants pretty commonly and I drop them with venoms, TL shuriken weaponry (pre scatbike) and well anything that has jinked on my side. Even snap shooting lances can get lucky but you want volume, low ap and twin linked if possible.

Also I'd tool your razorwing with disi's but not just for this match. Its a crappy anti tank platform but a great anti infantry one. However in this instance it's custom made to threaten FMCs. I'd also recommend night shields. Make him become distracted then make him work hard trying to drop your stealth flyer.

Lastly you don't want to be clustered because it will cause double hits from his locs as you may have found. If you can't park above the ground then consider deploying those units dismounted to make his target selection harder and avoid explodes and such.

12 Venoms... wins against Nids everytime. Especially if you place your venoms In higher up places.. where Lictors and See/shoot and Mawlocs cant get to (They can only hit the ground and You can charge something if you can stand next to them).

Its unreal to have 12 venoms I know, but... it wins everytime.

I don't own any Venoms currently, still working on getting a few. I have had some success with raider gun boats.

i recently elicit venom(s) as the main utility veichle of dark eldars. I am a very old player, from the time of when there was only raiders, and this was the first and the best discovery i made when i've returned in the wh40k scene.

They are fast, small sized, cheap and put out a lot of firepower. Imho are the best, except when you are facing spehss meringues. In that case the disintegrator cannon of the raider is priceless.

RCZ wrote:

i recently elicit venom(s) as the main utility veichle of dark eldars. I am a very old player, from the time of when there was only raiders, and this was the first and the best discovery i made when i've returned in the wh40k scene.

I'll second this.

RCZ wrote:

They are fast, small sized, cheap and put out a lot of firepower. Imho are the best, except when you are facing spehss meringues. In that case the disintegrator cannon of the raider is priceless.

Personally, I find Venoms more useful than Raiders against SMs (transport contents not withstanding).

In my experience, disintegrators just don't have enough shots to inflict meaningful damage.

yes, but i've (more than one time) be pleased from the psycological effect. Follow me.

The average player of space marine is a childish self-portraied hero. He walks across the board with self-confidance. A lot.

"why do i have to care about BLOS and cover, when i've my suppa-power-armourz-save of 3+?" he ask himself. He knows that 12 shots of venom could kill some of his boys, but choose to take the risk.

when you tear off him armour save, he feel naked. Also if at the end, you could get from him the same amount of wounds. When he feel that his armour save it's no longer assured, he start to move his troops not so confidently. He start to slow down and search covers.

But I don't want him to take cover. When he isn't looking for cover but he's out in the open, my Incubbi can run amok without penalty on initiative.

It depends from which is required to win the mission. Sometimes, i just wanna him drop heads down and halts from moving troops while i relocate mine.

When I first started playing DE my opponents initially thought that Venoms were the most OP, broken unit in the game! The sheer number of dice I was throwing caused more psychological damage than the guns themselves.

RCZ wrote:

yes, but i've (more than one time) be pleased from the psycological effect. Follow me.

The average player of space marine is a childish self-portraied hero. He walks across the board with self-confidance. A lot.

"why do i have to care about BLOS and cover, when i've my suppa-power-armourz-save of 3+?" he ask himself. He knows that 12 shots of venom could kill some of his boys, but choose to take the risk.

when you tear off him armour save, he feel naked. Also if at the end, you could get from him the same amount of wounds. When he feel that his armour save it's no longer assured, he start to move his troops not so confidently. He start to slow down and search covers.

But that's the thing - why would I want him to bunker down in cover? Pride cometh before destruction, so I'd much rather he was arrogantly walking his marines across open terrain and daring me to kill them.

CptMetal wrote:

But I don't want him to take cover. When he isn't looking for cover but he's out in the open, my Incubbi can run amok without penalty on initiative.

Basically this.

Also, a general lack of flamers and grenades means our army has relatively few ways to deal with units that have bunkered down in cover. Hence, I'd much prefer that his marines are standing in the open.

In our gaming groups we have a say that sound like in english: "you win a game by points". sometimes wounds doesent matter, if your opponent scores twice point as you.

RCZ wrote:

In our gaming groups we have a say that sound like in english: "you win a game by points". sometimes wounds doesent matter, if your opponent scores twice point as you.

Sorry but I'm not seeing the relevance.

I believe he's saying play the mission and it's a great reminder. Against armies like this that only have pseudo mobility via ds you can manipulate their choices with objective placement.

Also one disi cannon does identical casualties to 2 splinter cannons vs meq.

Brom wrote:

Also one disi cannon does identical casualties to 2 splinter cannons vs meq.

I wish mine did.

Sry, i think i've expressed badly.

In our local store we usually play missions without killpoints, only objectives mission (the scourge, relic, and so on)... and sometimes, you feel like you want to slow down your opponent, to prevent him to reach on of your objective or for somewhat reasons.

usually, SM player play like "dur durr, i've a good Armous Save, let's walk straight to the objective lolololololol!", and they play in the excactly way also if you point a splinter cannon toward they, because they risk thei 66% on the armour save.
If you deploy disi, they feel more uncofortable to walk their way on the board so easily. And therefore, usually move more cautiously, taking covers and slowing down.

RCZ wrote:

Sry, i think i've expressed badly.

In our local store we usually play missions without killpoints, only objectives mission (the scourge, relic, and so on)... and sometimes, you feel like you want to slow down your opponent, to prevent him to reach on of your objective or for somewhat reasons.

usually, SM player play like "dur durr, i've a good Armous Save, let's walk straight to the objective lolololololol!", and they play in the excactly way also if you point a splinter cannon toward they, because they risk thei 66% on the armour save.
If you deploy disi, they feel more uncofortable to walk their way on the board so easily. And therefore, usually move more cautiously, taking covers and slowing down.

Perhaps we're used to rather different SM opponents.

The main one I face is generally better than that when it comes to tactics. If he's going to make a push on my objectives, it's not going to be with footslogging marines. Instead, I can expect any or all of the following:
- 5 marines in a razorback or 10 marines in a rhino
- Biker command squad led by tooled-up chapter master to soak wounds
- Dreadnought in a drop pod landing directly on an objective
(all are Objective Secured)

The closest he comes to footslogging marines are when he uses a squad of 5 jump infantry.

The rest of his forces tend to castle up around objectives in his deployment zone - hence why I'm typically reluctant to make him castle even more.


That being said, we also have a marine player who conforms pretty well to the 'tactic' you mentioned. The sort of person who, in a 1000pt game, will spend about 750pts on a unit of terminators in a land raider and then proceed to dump them in front of the entire enemy army.

Suffice to say, he's not the SM player I'm concerned about.

in our local gaming store we have a lot of youngsters (16-20 yo) and a vast part of them play SM, and they are a lot more concerned to lose their men compared to an Ork, IG or even De player. And they tend to rely a lot on high armour saves (ie: terminators and so on).

In addition to this, we could point out: against terminators and less armored vehicles dissie are always better than splinter cannons. But it was not this the point, i was only trying to point out a slightly ignored factor (psychological, and which better applies on SM commanders).

Just for argument's sake ......

vs MEQ
2 Splinter Cannons = 8 hits ---- = 4 wounds ---- = 1 failed save. 1 dead Marine.
1 Dissie = 2 hits ---- = 1.33 ---- = no saves. 1.33 dead Marines.

You will kill the same amount of Marines with a dissie as 2 cannons, BUT you are more likely to kill 2. A dissie is better vs MEQ than 2 cannons imo.