Flying MC's.......How to deal with them

RAn into flying MC's for the first time in 6th, and it was a bit of an eye opener. I played against a nid list

2 x Flying Hive Tyrant, 2 twin-linked devourers

3 x Tervigons

3 x 2 Hive Guard (the shooty things)

1 x Mawloc

and some gaunts

So the flying tyrants just dominated the game, almost impossible to bring down as they were in zoom mode. Movement of between 12 and 24" with 24" range guns. that have a 360* arc of fire. That meant they outranged me and were almost wiping out a unit a turn for most of the game. I never put a wound on them and they never failed a grounded test.
I did consider trying to make it impossible for them to move towards me by spreading out between 12 and 24" away but it's a pretty large area to cover.

Obviously the answer is to take fliers or allied flying MC's to deal with them, but I wouldn't feel confident of our flyers being able to deal with these beasts. Any suggestions

all i can think of is fliers and purchased terrain guns mate, not that either of those will be hugely effective

Reaver jet bike bladevane attacks.

actually, yeah that could work lol. chain snares on your transports too. and allied vibrocannon while youre at it :-)

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but I wouldn't feel confident of our flyers being able to deal with these beasts. Any suggestions

2 Dark Lance shots and a Splinter Cannon Salvo? I think thats pretty confidently doing enough damage for grounded checks and more.

Add reavers with Cluster Caltrops.

Flyrants costs hell of a lot of points, far more then our Razorwings. Both of those units can get those flying monsters most of the time.

Chain snares would not work, as they only work in Movement Phase.

kenny, how much points are we talking about, i dont have a nid dex at all, and am lazy to go for it on google

If you ran full boats of warriors with splinter racks, you could move within 12" of these guys and get 20 poison shots, and you would get to re-roll all the non-6's because of the splinter racks. Still makes it difficult but at least that is massed firepower making him roll a bunch of grounded tests. Or maybe stick a splinter cannon in there and you'd get 18 twin-linked splinter rifles and 6 snap fire shots from the splinter cannon that aren't re-rollable....

you only make one grounding test per squad firing at the flyer, so if 6 gunboats fire at the same flyer, it only takes 6 grounding tests.

Flyers shoot them out of the sky pretty quickly, and even non-skyfire weapons can cause them to crash if they hit (don't even have to wound), taking a s9 ap2 hit.

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That meant they outranged me and were almost wiping out a unit a turn for most of the game

how the well do you get outranged ?
take a raider full of kabalite warriors => move up to 12" => shoot your 15 poisonned shot at max range with splinter racks
-> that makes 36" range, and if you can get at 12" than it makes 22 poisonned shots.

20 poisonned shots with rerolls on a 3+ save ( I tried against demon prince ) makes like 1.1 HP if I remember well, so 1/3 chances of it crashing, and it doesn't need much to have more than 1 effective hp taken from it.

flyers, quad gun on the ADL (Or bastion) or Reavers using bladevanes, other than that... just shoot the crap out of them and hope they drop out of the sky. Remember once they hit the ground, they are normal targets

Reavers and splinter racks are your best friends against flying MC's! I just fought 5 of them, and it was pretty much a given my bladevanes killed an MC a turn.

Reavers I never thought of buit not sure thats the answer.
They overcome the 6's to hit but then they need 6's to wound, so a unit of 6 bikes with average rolls is only going to do 2 wounds, 1 more than a twin cannon venom. I was pumping venom shots into these things turn after turn and getting nowhere. Admittedly they had gained FnP from some psychic powers so it was a uphill battle to actually wound them.

I also tried pumping 34 shots from the baron and a unit of 16 hellions into them, not a wound, they then jumped 24" over them and wiped the lot out in one round of shooting.

Outranged was maybe the wrong term but these MC's have a range of 48" (24 move and 24 gun range), I can't thinkof anything we have that out ranges that.

The more I think about it the more I see flyers as the only answer.

Points level was 1750 by the way

One cluster caltrop should to the trick, d6 S6 hits. Wounding on 3s or 4s as most MCs are T5-6.

Ran into a similar problem my first game of 6th against a daemon player; do yourself a favor and either shoot everything at them or nothing at all. Trying to pepper them a little each turn will only result in you hating life lol, if you want them down, shoot them till they are down(or you are out of things to shoot).

As a tyranid player who uses the flyrant (so glad it's good in 6th!) I gotta tell you, small arms fire from multiple units is the way to duke em. Just keep forcing grounding tests.

In our armory, the Venom would be good for this. Good range, good maneuverability to get the shots, 12 scannon shots should safely secure at least one hit. Each venom forces a separate grounding test. Once the beast is down, lay into it with lances or more splinter.

Never underestimate the carnage that they can unleash though. I killed 5 landspeeders, 10 assault marines and a librarian in one game with one flyrant. Vectorsmashing one target (typically a light vehicle) and then shooting up whatever looks best can do massive damage!

I played against a daemons list that had 5 flying monters (over in the battle report section). I used splinter cannon venoms and raiders with warriors and splinter racks to get the volume of fire needed to come up with 6's to hit. I shot all the splinter weapons first, and then the ones that got grounded were hit with lances from everywhere. Even with their invlunerable saves they didn't last long. Just remember you only need to hit them for a grounding check... you don't have to wound.

Blade vanes work well also and can be a big suprise to the other player, although they won't cause flyers to ground.

Sig121 wrote:

Just remember you only need to hit them for a grounding check... you don't have to wound.

Actually you do, it's written that grounding test are made when the units looses one.

Fruz wrote:

Sig121 wrote:

Just remember you only need to hit them for a grounding check... you don't have to wound.

Actually you do, it's written that grounding test are made when the units looses one.

It's on page 49 under grounded tests. "... suffers one or more hits from a unit's Shooting attack..." You don't have to wound. Only hit.

Well that's a diffence of translation, the litteral translation from mine would be : "if a monstrous flying creature losses one health point or more during a shooting phase, it has to make a ground test"

I'll rely on you're version so, much easyer then )).

I always found carbineborn to be good against those kinds of targets, flying or not.

Hmm, well the reavers were a bit of a disaster.

Faced 3 flying beasts this week, 2 tyrants and a harpie. Eventually got rid of them all. Mostly by grounding and then shooting the crap out of them with anything left.

Thing is a venom will only hit twice, wound 1 and that will probably be saved. So you need on average 3 venoms shooting at the thing to get it grounded and then hope you have enough firepower left to kill it or have something close enough to assault it and tie it up. If not next turn it's up and flying again.
It took so much effort to get these down that the 3 tervigons had generated a crap ton of bugs by then that the place was litteraly overflowing with them. Couple that with the vehicles taking fire from 3 squads of 2 hive guards and it's an uphill struggle. Add in some psychic powers and it's just a nightmare.

I was hoping to go just codex DE but I doubt from my experiences so far that it will be possible this edition. I'm thinking of Daemon allies with
Herald of Tzeentch on Chariot
Unit of horrors
Soul Grinder.

All of these can at least shoot when they arrive and add a bit of toughness to the army through Inv saves, number of wounds or AV 13 4 HP

Can someone confirm and put a screenshot of the page of the original english book where it shows that it's when a flying MC's is hit, then it has to make a grounding test plz ( page 49 I bet or something like that ) ? or at least send it to me with a mp ? Because that's really a huge delta to the french version to me there.