Main Issues for Nids in today's Meta?

[l0rdf1end]

Hi chaps,
Wouldn't mind hearing from you all concerning problems faced in your recent games.

I'll start with a few examples.

Tau Gunline - This is a big one, our poor little bugs get shot to death and then we don't have much left to deal with the mass of shooting when/if we make it to their lines.
How do we mitigate this? - The most obvious solution I can think of is T6 2+ saves like the Tfex. Long distance shooting like a bucket load of Biovores and/or Mawlocs.
I totally appreciate that there's not an easy answer to this and it also potentially requires list tailoring.

AM Ignoring cover twinlinked lascannons - I'm seeing blob lists now containing multiple psykers gaining access to Perfect Timing and Prescience. This can also be coupled with Preferred enemy. - Not nice in the slightest and the best way I can see to deal with this is Biovores again but probably the best option is precision shooting from Flyrants.

What big issues are you facing and how do you plan to deal with them?

[tag8833]

It is all Tau gunline that I hate. Every single Tau upgrade is undercosted, so giving them skyfire is cheap. Interceptor is cheap. Target Lock is insanely cheap. Buffmander is the single most ridiculous unit in all of 40k. The Skyray and Riptide are in the top 5 most ridiculous units in 40k. Most Tau shooting ignores cover, and most Tyranid defensive strategies are build around depending on cover. Tau can ally with anyone. Tau Overwatch is all TL, and the entire army gets to overwatch instead of just the unit being charged. Tau get to move twice because of assault moves. Riptides can beat Flyrants in CC. Tau gets 2+ and 3+ armor saves in every FOC slot, and can ally with itself to break the FOC. Everything about Tau is built to beat Tyranids.

On top of all of this. Tau is the 1st or 2nd most popular army in 40k (depending if you count Iron hands and Salamanders and other marine chapters as separate armies).

I play against Tau, and win 15% of the time, and then I play against literally any other army and absolutely stomp them. I have to keep 2 sets of lists: Optimized ones for playing Tau, and Sub-optimal ones to give other armies a chance.

[coredump]

Wait until you play Eldar....

[l0rdf1end]

tag8833, interested to hear what your optimised beat Tau 15% of the time looks like?
And yep, Coredump, Eldar aren't much fun either. Biggest issues are probably spammed serpents or a Wraith Knight rolling 6's to wound on your unwounded MC.
Makes me want to cry.

[DukeMantis]

Top 4 issues i have encountered:

1) Eldar and Tau spam armies (spam serpents, spam ignores cover/skyfire/interceptor etc)
2) Cheesemarines - aka Grav Centurions with Tigurius (sometimes in a Storm Raven)
3) Imperial Guard leafblower lists & las/plas spam (speaking of old codex)
4) Double Helldrake allies attached to anything

I find that alot of the other armies have special rules, wargear and psych powers that are simply more powerful than ours, not to mention a vast number of weapons with superior range and AP to us, after all this is a shooting game.

[coredump]

I *love* helldrakes.... CSM players keep flying them forward, letting me shoot them down from the rear arc.

[wheresthebathroom]

^^ Helldrakes are easy peezy. But on topic, I haven't figured it out yet myself. I don't understand how the tau codex exists in the same universe as ours. I just don't get why we don't get certain things. No ap2/1 (oxocrine sure but 24" gtfo). No 2+ no invuls. I just don't understand why we don't get this stuff. If one army has a 72" ap2 pie plate gun then every army should have one, or at least a reasonable answer to it. And don't say crones. It would take like 20 vector strikes to kill a riptide. Not to mention it will have skyfire and just delete your crone(s). Sorry I didn't originize my thoughts very well. I'm just butthurt that eldar, tau, and now ig, all get awesome well balanced codexes while we get monobuild (please do not swear). I'm so peeved I haven't played in two weeks and have no intent to play this week either.

[coredump]

Tau and Eldar are just that much better than every other codex out there. I am not convinced about AM at this point. Strong, sure; but I don't think T/E strong.

[krimson]

I'm glad I haven't faced a tau army yet. Eldar are a pain, but if not running "spammy" units they don't feel so cheesy (venoms are pretty out of hand at the moment, and jetbikes are hell)

But if you really want a unit that pisses me off... it's deep striking monoliths. those things are almost impossibly hard to take down without FMC's rushing and smashing them...

[tag8833]

Apr 23, 2014 15:47:26 GMT coredump said:

Wait until you play Eldar....

I haven't lost a game to Eldar yet. 6-0. I don't have anyone that plays seer council, but I've got a guy that is going to run Wave Serpent spam against me soon.
It is probably an Apples to Oranges comparison. 1 of the Tau players is the closest to a power gamer that exists in my local meta (prefers 3 riptides, 3 Broadsides, 2 Skyrays, and lots of suites), and the other two guys who play Tau sometimes play net lists, but each only have 1 Riptide. Meanwhile the only Eldar player that I see regularly is a very "fluffy" player.

ETA: I tend to fluff up my lists when I face him while staying competitive.  I haven't been doing a very good job of that (because I'm 6-0), but we've played a number of close games. 

Apr 23, 2014 15:57:54 GMT l0rdf1end said:

tag8833, interested to hear what your optimised beat Tau 15% of the time looks like?

When I play against trip-tides tau, I usually run dual flyrant + venom in a box + 3 Mawloc. Something like this:

Tyrant (Wings, 2 TL Devourers, Hive Commander)
Tyrant (Wings, 2 TL Devourers)

Venom -> goes in bastion
Zoey

10 HGaunts
10 Tgaunts (spinefist)
25 TGaunts (10 spinefist, 15 Devourer) -> Outflanking, then kill as many broadsides / suites as they can then tarpit a riptide / broadside over an objective if possible. This units has as many riptide kills as any unit in my list.

20 Gargoyles -> usually exist to bubblewrap and then eat overwatch if I want to charge with a flyrant. Sometimes they tarpit a riptide that gets out of range of combined overwatch.

Mawloc -> Winning and losing usually comes down to deep strike scatters.
Mawloc
Mawloc

Living Artillery -> Crones work just as well (0W-3L-2D record), except my opponent feels the need to list tailor when I run them, and thus is unhappy when I don't let him, so I usually keep the Exocrine instead.
3 Warriors(2 devourers, BS) -> on top of bastion
3 Biovores -> Snipe out the marker lights.
Exocrine -> Kills broadside if it gets the chance.

Bastion + Comms.

Running that list, I can sometimes beat Tau. 15% or so. But it usually requires luck. Once a Mawloc arrived, Killed one broadside, and the other 2 ran off the table. That game went well for me, but ended in a draw. I need good Mawloc deep strikes to eliminate most of the marker lights, and broadsides. Another helpful thing is Onslaught so that I can onslaught a tyrant to kill a skyray. It is a terrible trade, because that flyrant is almost always dead the next turn, but if I can pull it off when the skyray is still full of missiles, it is worth it.

I know the list looks really light on synapse, and it is. But it is also really close to being tabled, and rarely do I lose my synapse without getting tabled. I used to drop the gargs for a Trygon Prime, but he figured out to kill the Trygon prime first, and started killing it with interceptor before it could even shoot.

To give you an idea of the Tau (Farsight) list I'm usually playing against, here is his standard TAC list.

Commander (2 missile pods, Talisman of Arthas Moloch (4 dice DTW), Target Lock) + 2 Marker lights

Riptide (Interceptor, Skyfire, Eathcaster Pilot Array (reroll Nova), HBC)
Riptide (Interceptor, FNP, HBC)
Riptide (Interceptor, FNP, IA)

3 Crisis Suites (2 Missile pods, Target Lock) + 4 Marker Lights -> Joined to commander
3 Crisis Suites (2 Plasma, Target Lock) -> Deep striking
3 Crisis Suites (2 Flamers, Fleet + Hit and Run) -> Deep striking, or walking on sometimes because I'm outflanking gaunts
2 Crisis Suites (2 Flamers) -> Deep striking, or walking on sometimes because I'm outflanking gaunts

Skyray
Skyray
3 Broadsides(HYMP, 1 Skyfire, 2 Target Locks)

Sometimes he drops a riptide and some suites to bring in buffmander + Kroot. He tends to add buffmander to his Crisis suites, so it doesn't worry me as much as if he attached him to the broadsides.


Anyways, I'm not saying my list is perfectly optimized to beat tau. But I will say that if I run that list against non-Tau opponents they tend to get very upset, and concede fairly early. I did run this list against IG mech and lose, but I failed all of my grounding checks, and did a bad job deploying.

[krimson]

Just by looking at the tao stats (cant say from experience) wouldn't the tyrannofex with a rupture cannon be optimal??? since it seems they take very few units and being able to drop one per turn seems like it would be a huge advantage. and gun lines in cover wouldn't fare too well vs a torrented flamer.

Adding in some hive guard would also seem to be beneficial. as you can force them to find a position in which they can find LoS and not just stand there all day.


Never faced Tau, so I'm just asking, not giving advice

EDIT: also Tag, You prefer spinefists over fleshborers? twin linked S3 vs s4 is enticing, perhaps it warrants some math...

[gigasnail]

stop letting opponents list tailor. lol seriously, wtf is wrong with people...

do you guys play 13 year olds on a regular basis? people that pulled that here would pretty much get laughed out of the game.

[tag8833]

Apr 23, 2014 20:30:01 GMT krimson said:

Just by looking at the tao stats (cant say from experience) wouldn't the tyrannofex with a rupture cannon be optimal??? since it seems they take very few units and being able to drop one per turn seems like it would be a huge advantage. and gun lines in cover wouldn't fare too well vs a torrented flamer.

Ok, A few thoughts here. A rupture cannon is S10 AP:4 shooting at BS:3. So only one hit per turn. Broadsides and Riptides have a 2+ armor, Crisis Suites have a 3+. So on average you would kill a little less than 1 Broadside per game with a Tfex with a rupture cannon, and 1-2 Crisis Suites. That is a pretty poor return on investment.

TFex with the Torrent flamer on the other hand has some major supporters. With Tau's extra move (assault move of 2D6), and relatively small units in lists like the one I bang my head against frequently means that the flamer isn't going to do a lot of damage. I see a little more advantage with taking the Fleshborer hive, which many will find as heretical.

Tau doesn't have much AP:2 shooting. A good amount of AP:3 thanks to seeker missiles. So a Tfex has better survivability than anything else the Tyranids can run against Tau. I only have 1 Tfex, so I haven't been able to try spamming them, and adding 1 to my otherwise fast list doesn't seem like a great move. But my instincts tell me that based on the sheer number of shots, and extreme mobility of Tau (and buffmander), a Tfex wouldn't really offer as much benefit as the conventional wisdom suggests. My particular Tau opponent keeps a deep striking squad of plasma suites and a Riptide with Ion Accelerator for AP:2 needs, and that is enough to put down 1 Tfex pretty easily if it has marker light support.

Apr 23, 2014 20:30:01 GMT krimson said:

Adding in some hive guard would also seem to be beneficial. as you can force them to find a position in which they can find LoS and not just stand there all day.

Hive guard don't require LOS, but neither does a lot of Tau Shooting. SMS is 30" Twin Linked S5 AP5 Assault 4, Ignores LOS and Cover, and can be found on Riptides, Broadsides, and most Tau Vehicles. Plus Hive Guard took a BS nerf which hurt, and the great armor saves of everything Tau that matters, and you have a pretty ineffective unit.

Apr 23, 2014 20:30:01 GMT krimson said:

EDIT: also Tag, You prefer spinefists over fleshborers? twin linked S3 vs s4 is enticing, perhaps it warrants some math...

Spinefist are better against T3 and T6 than devourers, and the Same at T4. And those are the most common Toughness values I see. They are also better on overwatch.

[gigasnail]

if you're running acid spray fexes, don't use one, use two with AG. one is easy to kill. two...not so much. against tau you're not likely to get them into anything turn 1, but likely by turn 2 and if you're not melting by turn 3, something went wrong. opponent should be about out of places to run by then.

would the extra range be worth it on the fleshborer hive vs acid spray? being more likely to start lighting things up on turn 2, i dunno. 20 shots, 10 hit, 5 armor saves per gun platform starting (presumably) on turn 2 vs. S6 template with AP4. dunno man; that's going to depend on a lot of factors. i feel the spray would probably be better but this is just opinion; i don't think anyone's going to be able to say for certain that A or B is better in this case. if it's working for you, keep doing it.

rupture cannon is irredeemably awful though.

[coredump]

I am willing to say 'for certain' that Acid Spray is better than Fleshborer hive.

FBH can only kill models within 18". It should be pretty rare for the AS to cause fewer wounds than the FBH. Plus the AS has a better AP *and* ignores cover.