Burrowing Tyrannids strategies

I've had some problems with Tyrannids and their burrowing capabilities. Namely being completely and utterly surrounded and every unit being charged from different directions. Is there anyway you guys  know how best to prevent us being surrounded?

Deploying in a corner will limit how many sides they can attack from, other than that, there's not much you can do to keep them from charging.

However, what you can do, is damage control with screening. I've found that 6-10 Khymera forming a ring outside of your forces gives a lot of cheap fodder. You can easily put 12" of space between your core units and the dogs, added on with the extra 9.1" your opponent will have to set up in. ~22" of space will likely give you a turn or two of shooting.

As far as getting surrounded goes, focusing fire is your friend. Dedicate all of your firepower to breaking a hole you can escape, and, maybe, bring some more screening to protect your transports from combat.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Deploying in a corner will limit how many sides they can attack from, other than that, there's not much you can do to keep them from charging.

However, what you can do, is damage control with screening. I've found that 6-10 Khymera forming a ring outside of your forces gives a lot of cheap fodder. You can easily put 12" of space between your core units and the dogs, added on with the extra 9.1" your opponent will have to set up in. ~22" of space will likely give you a turn or two of shooting.

As far as getting surrounded goes, focusing fire is your friend. Dedicate all of your firepower to breaking a hole you can escape, and, maybe, bring some more screening to protect your transports from combat.

Only played 2 battles against the nids codex, and yes they are insanely fast.
What I tried, and it worked well for me. Have something to sacrifice each turn, for the first 2 turns at least. As mentioned dogs work well, but also do not hesitate to throw a screening line of kabalites out of their transport. I would actually try to deploy more in the center back of your deployment. then after turn 1 you can shift completely to 1 side and with 1 or 2 units of kabalites again block the nids from charging important stuff. Also if he goes with lot's of burrowing, and is not hydra, don't hesitate to charge him. If you can wound him enough that he cannot kill something in 1 turn, he has the option of staying to kill you or move forward but still unable to charge your shooting base.
Also depending on what he takes, flyers are really good fro screaning against charges from most of his units.

^Just to echo what they've said, a min squad of kabs is 35 points. You place a couple of those 9" out from your castle'd corner? Totally worth it.

Thanks! I'll be sure to try that out next time, have you got any other strats for lower points games (under 1,000)?

I play DE and my brother Nids. We are both quite new to WH40k but he soon found out that tunneling right into the middle of my shooting based army with about half of his models seems to be a valid strategy.

We both have armies of about 1.2k points and my choice of units is still very limited. Mostly what you get from the start collecting box. But what I found to be a not too bad counter is putting my archons up front and the rest of the army spread behind them, not leaving any 9" space for the nids to deepstrike. Then I use reavers with +1 T to act as fast response if he appears somewhere unexpected. The reavers just tarpit his units and try to retreat again in their turn. I also use blasters and dark lances on my warriors for his multi-wound models. They usually are close enough for them. Most of the splinter rifles are used for the smaller models.

Most of the time I win through victory points, but if the game lasts longer than 5 turns he usually wipes me out.

EDIT: You should also have a look at this from the rulebook. My brother used to neglect this:
"When setting up your army during Deployment for a matched play game, at least half the total number of units in your army must be set up on the battlefield, even if every unit in your army has an ability that would allow them to be set up elsewhere."

What’s the movement of most Nids? If they fail the charge are we able to get away with our flying boats?

The problem is many of them may get adrenal glands (+1" on charge and advance moves) and hive fleet behemoth lets them re-roll failed charge rolls. If they spawn 9.1" away from you, they have about 45% probability to charge with one roll and 70% to charge with two rolls. And that's just for one unit. If they have 3 units within 9.1", each having two charge rolls the probability that one unit has a successful charge is about 97%.

The only thing you can do is position your units such that they can only charge the units you want them to charge. Although, this becomes difficult if you need to split your units for objective markers.

EDIT: But if they really fail the charge raiders are faster than most of what they have. Exceptions are the flying Hive Tyrant and some other stuff I have not played against yet.

Movement 8-12 for the most common fast units (genestealers hormagaunts ravaners gargoyles etc)
So while our raiders have a larger base move we can't really get out of their reach if you ad in charge rolls etc.

Add in their stratagems, and other abilities and they can easily reach us even when 18-24 away
doubling advance distance (and some units as well as a psychic power to be able to charge after advance)
+1 charge distance
3 ways of getting an extra movement phase (one with and two without being able to charge afterwards)
advancing 3d6 pick highest (and some units as well as a psychic power to be able to charge after advance)
This means that maybe not everything but enough things can reach us to kill us.
Nids are really mobile even if their base movement stats are slightly lower than ours.

I think the maximum they can reach with a charge is (with maximum rolls) 60 inch or so.
(12 base +2* best of 3d6 advance) + second movement (12 base +2* best of 3d6 advance) + charge

I have to admit that I didn't look at their stratagems. I only know one nids player (my brother), and we are both newbies. So it could be possible that he is playing them wrong. If they have the ability to get an additional movement phase + being able to charge, it might be better to just move in instead of using deep strike.

Probably I should not tell him this. ^^

The thing is it is really good (although the extra move and charge comes from a special character) but they also pay for it.
Which is why I really like how the nids are done. They are really good and have really good internal synnergy. But you have to work (and pay points) to make things like that happen.

|Meavar wrote:

Add in their stratagems, and other abilities and they can easily reach us even when 18-24 away
doubling advance distance (and some units as well as a psychic power to be able to charge after advance)
+1 charge distance
3 ways of getting an extra movement phase (one with and two without being able to charge afterwards)
advancing 3d6 pick highest (and some units as well as a psychic power to be able to charge after advance)
This means that maybe not everything but enough things can reach us to kill us.
Nids are really mobile even if their base movement stats are slightly lower than ours.

I think the maximum they can reach with a charge is (with maximum rolls) 60 inch or so.
(12 base +2* best of 3d6 advance) + second movement (12 base +2* best of 3d6 advance) + charge

Combine this with the fact that he's both behemoth and runs a Mawloc, you're saying I can't do jack crap. Thanks.

Barrywise wrote:

If they fail the charge are we able to get away with our flying boats?

They're not because of two words: Behemoth Mawloc.
That mostly just does a sprinkle of mortal wounds but distracts my shooty shooty guys from raining evil justice on his tyrants and his other deep strikers

I had a look at the nids codex and now I see what you mean, and where it leads to, and I don't like it.

" set up the Mawloc anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 1" away from any enemy models"

Even if the Mawloc cannot charge this turn, he is totally breaking the formation apart. And the number of mortal wound he is dishing out is crazy considering that he is doing it for "each enemy unit within 2"". If you place your units too close together you are screwed as well as placing them too far apart.

EDIT: Does the Mawloc really come on the large oval 100x120mm base?

Ragnos wrote:

I had a look at the nids codex and now I see what you mean, and where it leads to, and I don't like it.

"Set up the Mawloc anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 1" away from any enemy models"

...Even if the Mawloc cannot charge this turn...
EDIT: Does the Mawloc really come on the large oval 100x120mm base?

Yeah, it's really bad but it gets worse. My friend  runs it with Adrenal glands (I think, not sure) and behemoth meaning that, if I do want to get guys out of fight-lock when he charges, I'd have to advance away from him which means: bye bye splinter rifles, cannons, non-vehicle dark lances and some of my shredder and blaster shots

Also yes, yes it does

A mawloc is where Wyches come in. If you move away from it, he wins.

It has about 8 attacks, but at max only hits on a 4+. Then you have your 4+ jink save - before even calculating wounds that is 2 guys probably dying. 10 man squad, that is 5 combat turns or about 3 game turns for it to kill them all. Scatter a few blaster shots into it before charging and you may even drop it down a tier. Then it will probably take the rest of the game for it to chew through your wyches, and the rest of your army is free to go on about their business

Faitherun wrote:

A mawloc is where Wyches come in. If you move away from it, he wins.

It has about 8 attacks, but at max only hits on a 4+. Then you have your 4+ jink save - before even calculating wounds that is 2 guys probably dying. 10 man squad, that is 5 combat turns or about 3 game turns for it to kill them all. Scatter a few blaster shots into it before charging and you may even drop it down a tier. Then it will probably take the rest of the game for it to chew through your wyches, and the rest of your army is free to go on about their business

Agreed. They and can usually survive for a turn or two if another unit rolls in 2v1. Great for tying up something...

How have you been prioritizing these threats in your first shooting phase?? Say you have some wych or kabalite screens in CC.

If the answer is Wyches something sounds desperately wrong to me.

If you want to play tie up games for a Mawloc then Wracks seem a better bet, as they could at least do some damage, rather than just die slowly.

If you want to kill it, you need:
Dark Lances 1 shot, 2/3 hit, 4/9 wounds, 4/9 unsaved, 14/9 damage (7.7 required to kill)
Splinter Rifles 1 shot, 2/3 hit, 1/3 wounds, 1/9 unsaved, 1/9 damage (108 required to kill)

If you have a Farseer with Doom those numbers are reduced to 5.8 Dark Lances or 72 Splinter shots. That means about 40 Warriors (in rapid fire range) or two Ravagers.

Another option would be to degrade it to 5+ to hit (6W) and engage with some Mandrakes, reducing it to 6+ to hit.

Mathammered out how much dmg 10 wyches do per round:
1 blast pistol + agonizer, 6 splinter pistols, 3 hydra gauntlets and rest hekatarii blades --> 3.055 dmg per round

5 Wracks: 1 ossefactor + haemunculus tools --> 2 * 0.685 dmg --> 1.37 dmg for 10 wracks

Sure wracks have T4 and the equipment on wyches costs extra, but in this case I would think the better melee unit in terms of dmg are wyches. Altough the T4 would help a lot against the S6 Mawloc. If you just want to tie the mawloc up, wracks sound like the better option to me.

Some issues with your numbers.

I get 3.63 wounds per 10 Wyches, assuming you get within Blast Pistol range, and strength drugs. That drops to 2.85 wounds if you charge from outside Blast Pistol range. You could also include Darklight Grenades if you get close enough.

Using an Electrocorrosive Whip for the Acothyst, 5 Wracks gets 2.69 wounds. The Wracks are a bit more expensive, so not completely fair to compare 10 Wyches to 10 Wracks, but the Wracks would win by a lot if you did.

Door number 3: Khymerae charge! Almost as durable as the wracks, faster, dishing out 3 S4 attacks each (possibly with beastmaster rerolls to hit), and cheaper than wracks to boot! They can cover a larger army footprint for counterattacks too. They're basically Wyches on ALL the drugs, for only 1 point more!

HOW CAN YOU SAY NO?!?

Ahh, I didn't give them any drugs and did not use the grenade. Thanks for the correction. Again:
+1A drug, 1 blast pistol, 1 grenade, 5 splinter pistols, 6 hekatarii blades, 1 argonizer, 3 hydra = 4.085 dmg

+1S drug, rest is the same = 4.278 d

Will have a look at Khymerae ;-)

EDIT:
2 Khymerae = 0.444 dmg for --> 5 * 0.444 = 2.22 dmg for 10 Khymerae
0.593 with re-rolls --> 5 * 0.593 = 2.956

Ragnos wrote:

Altough the T4 would help a lot against the S6 Mawloc. If you just want to tie the mawloc up, wracks sound like the better option to me.

But don't forget the 4+ wych invuln as opposed to the Wrack 5+ and the No Escape rule which actually makes Wyches better tier-uppers

That's a point. Should the mawloc retreat, all of them will probably die very fast in the shooting phase. "No Escape" could really be a big help there.

EDIT: Not to mention that he might not be able to use his movement phase with the mawloc if he loses the roll-off.

I'd recommend 2 5 man squads of wyches with agonizer and blast pistol if you can afford em. If I'm not mistaken that's 2 no escape roles as well.

Sometimes wyches really aren't bad, like DP with axe or sword. Maulerfiends, and I would think mawlocs. Also 1" doesn't mean he can just go anywhere, it does have a big base. Get your guys out of the vehicles and spread out in a corner. Let him pop up outside your castle and eat a dog or two.