Help Vs. Imperial Guard Mech List

[shinra1988]

Hey there,

So I am going up against a friend on friday who plays Imperial Guard.. and it's a mean list.

I can't tell you exactly what's in it, but I can give you what I saw.

10 tanks
1 Vendetta

and 4 units of 10 veterans with plasma guns (I think there were 2 or 3 plasma in each unit)



We have a friendly rivalry.

I play strictly nids, and he plays Guard, Grey Knights, and Eldar.

(I've stomped his eldar and grey knights without a problem before, but now he says he's bringing his "good" army)

The list I was thinking of bringing against his:

HQ:

Flyrant - 2x TL BL Devourers - Wings - 260

Flyrant - 2x TL BL Devourers - Wings - 260

Troop:

Tervigon - Extra power, Tox, Adrenaline - 190pts

Tervigon - Extra power, Tox, Adrenaline - 190pts

Tervigon - Extra power, Tox, Adrenaline - 190pts

Vanilla Gants x 20 - 100pts

Vanilla Gants x 20 - 100 pts

Vanilla Gants x 20 - 100 pts

Elites

Doom of Malantai in pod - 130 pts

2x Hive Guard - 50 pts

Heavy Supp

Carnifex w/ 2x TL BL Dev - Mycetic Spore - 230 pts (Drop this puppy behind some tanks for rear armor shots)

Total: 1850

Optional:

(Remove hive guard and 2 gants to replace with:

1x Venomthrope - 55pts

1x Venomthrope 55pts

(these two will provide cover against the stupid (please do not swear) no armor save on your MC's plasma weapon spam out the top hatch of his tanks)



Any help? Tactics? Changes? Suggestions?

I was thinking of setting up behind as much cover as possible, and keeping my 2 tyrants in reserve, and volunteering to go 2nd turn, so that when his flyer comes on, my next turn I get to gun the damn thing down from rear armor with them.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. He's my friend, but I CANNOT LOSE TO HIS STUPID GUARD.

ahaha thanks.

[shinra1988]

Keep in mind, any tank that I kill in CC with an MC, will more than likely be killed in a volley of plasma the next turn.

It's almost a 1 MC for 1TANK situation, and I have less Mc's

[infornography]

I'd advise against the venomthropes. They are flimsy and you can get better cover saves from terrain on the board assuming you have a reasonable amount of terrain on the board.

In my experience the best way to deal with a parking lot is with a heavy reserve list. drop a terv and replace it with a trygon or an ymgarl brood. I'd reduce those termagant units to the bare minimum as they won't help you much here. That will free up another couple hundred points for another Trygon or ymgarl brood.

Reserve as many as you can and make sure you have hive commander on one of the flyrants. Outflank one of the tervigons. If possible put crushing claws on it.

Turn 1 have both flyrants, both termagant broods, Your Hive Guard, and the non outflanking tervigon hang back in area terrain to get good cover saves. Maybe spawn some gants and run them toward an objective.

On turn 2 you present him with so many high threat targets that he can't think straight and use the Ymgarls to remove the biggest threat from the board or at least tie it up in melee. You will probably lose at most 2 of your units, usually I find Nothing dies because he isn't focusing down anything. The ideal situation here is he tries to focus down the Doom of Malantai leaving the real threats alone. Meanwhile both your flyrants can swoop across the board to add to the emerging threats ideally taking down the Vendetta so your enemy loses any mobility that would have given him. This is also a good time to start advancing your backfield tervigon and hive guard.

On turn 3 you can remove several threats at once. Try to pop transport vehicles with ranged shots so you can assault their juicy cargo The outflanking terv can spawn a unit of termagants who can glance to death one vehicle while it eats another nearby. Also by this point you will likely be getting targets in range of your hive guard who can try to pop some vehicles so you can make their contents dead or distracted.

On turn 4 you will likely have the enemy fully engaged with everything except for a couple of lurking termagant broods holding down the fort back home. Guard does not perform well when the enemy is all up in their deployment zone. You will be surprised how quickly a parking lot can turn into a junkyard.

[shinra1988]

That is an awesome reply. I'll tweak things and see how that works.

My instinct was to hide from the guns, not run up into their faces. Dropping will work much better.

[nurglitch]

Can you describe the turrets of the tanks you saw? Because Leman Russ Eradicators are pretty harsh on Tyranids.

Something else to watch out for is the Demolitions upgrade on Veterans squads: Those melta-bombs do a number on Tyranid Monstrous Creatures.

[ranmafan]

My suggestions:

Bring just 3x 10 Termagants for the Tervigon troop choices.
I'd replace the Carnifex with 3x Zoeys in a Drop pod, but depends on if you're playing a friendly game or not.
If I'm not wrong he's likely to deploy his plasma toting veterans in transports - making them immune to Spirit Leech. At the distances you'll be engaging his army in, I'd replace it with zoanthropes or Hive Guards.

If he brings anything AV14 though, I'd suggest definitely replacing the Carnifex and/or Doom with Zoanthropes in a Spore (since Warp Blast is almost as effective, and if he's worth his tactics his infantry will all hide in area terrain anyway). And with that many models podding in, I'd suggest Hive Commander as I've had too many games where my reserves came in turn 4... way too late to make a difference.

Bring Gargoyles with the remaining 200+ points - Against IG I'd suggest just bringing naked gargoyles. You either glance them to death from behind with Fleshborers or they're all rear-AV11 anyway and it won't matter.

REMEMBER: Gargoyles are NOT affected by synaptic feedback when a tervi bites it. The gants make nice moving cover saves, but you WILL lose 1 tervi before it even gets close to an IG army!
They also have Hammer of Wrath if you use their wings to assault. And blinding venom!

You can probably bring about 30 Gargoyles to this fight (more or less if you trim or bring more Hive Guards). break them into one brood of 10 and one of 20 (the 10 providing cover for the 20 providing cover for the Flyrants/etc.). Use the Gargoyles' speed to divide and block LOS to the enemy's forces as your Flyrants zoom down the table - you want to isolate the IG army piecemeal and focus on killing one major threat at a time (in this case, anything that can kill MCs easily first).

If he clumps everything in a vehicle park formation (basically side by side in a superdense formation), your gargoyles will need to get in the faces of as many out-of-reach tanks as possible (since most of them have rear-AV11, adrenal gland gargs can't do much except clog their guns anyhow) while your forces bear down on those closer and within striking distance. In these cases your best antitank will be the Tervigons, while Hive Guards chip hull points en route.

The major problem I've faced against unfriendly IG armies are the huge number of kiting, AV13/14 front-armour tanks that just chip away at you. You'll want fast-moving models to block their retreat (Gargs/Flyrants, podding models), a tough frontal force to keep them divided (tervis/HIve guards/T6 wound models), and enough bodies to provide cover saves for everyone and tarpits once the vehicles pop. A truly mobile IG commander will be moving every turn to keep your Nid forces chasing them.

It gets worse once the Vendettas and their other siblings come in. You probably want your Flyrants downing them ASAP. Since the enemy flyers only come in turn 2 earliest, hopefully your Spore pod reserves have deployed as well and can pick up the slack from the Flyrants.

This is one situation where Ymgarls are definitely worth it as well (might even replace Hive Guards for them!) - you can place them in a central piece of terrain and when they come in, you can immediately give them S5 (for rear-AV 11) or +1 A (for rear-AV10) while charging the tanks, since none of them can snap-fire. Against Chimaeras this is a different matter... but honestly I'd be more afraid of the veteran squads simply because they're scoring/denial + plasma guns = death of MCs.

Questions to ask yourself:

1) How many infantry plasma guns can he currently bring to bear on your MCs vs. How many guns can his tanks bring to bear on your Tervis/Flyrants? Tanks are scary, but they typically can't put out more wounds (2-3 max) than 2 squads of veterans w/ plasma guns.
2) How much distance does your flootslogging half have to cover before coming into base contact with the enemy? Are you overextending your fast movers?
3) Blast Markers are less scary than Punishers and dedicated anti heavy infantry guns. Your army will be largely MCs and single models which laugh at blast markers but fear the Rapid-Firing plasma guns and other assault cannons - pick your targets!

Tactical notes:
1) Swooping Hive Tyrants CAN take cover saves while in Area terrain/ruins/etc. - nothing in the rules say they can't. ALWAYS try to maneuver them into area terrain while moving.
2) Remember firing priority - those models with the FEWEST viable targets should always fire first to give those with MORE viable targets more options in the event of a lucky round of rolling.
3) Are your Gargoyles providing enough cover saves to the footsloggers? Abuse the 2" coherency rule - gargoyles have a WIDE LOS-blocking footprint.
4) Feel free to drop a Mycetic spore ONTO enemy vehicles - they automatically move to avoid a Mishap anyway. Abuse this to avoid falling off the table if he moves along the table edge.
5) The latest Nids FAQ allows nids to deploy within 6" from the spore - ABUSE THIS RULE!

I'm tired now. Hopefully this has been helpful!

[0800hell]

2 hive guard is 100 points not 50

[vinny0698]

hi, you have had some very good advice, i regularly use a guard list similar to what you have described, it is very effective, you need to get in and amongst those vehicles fast, if you do he cant use those templates for fear of scatter. concentrate on the transports first and then the vets once chimeras are popped, cant win without troops, and guard troops die easily or if they are like mine they leg it.

[brianb9999]

Vets with plas guns and leman Russ executioners are scary for monstrous creatures...I say this as an IG player myself. Killing those vets will remove his plasma guns and his scoring units. Manticores can also be particularly nasty, as they can remove an entire swarm with a lucky turn of rolling, or entire broods of hive guard. Most of the other Russ variants aren't so scary for nids.

[ranmafan]

Just ran an Apoc game against an IG army today. One very specific tactic involves using spore pod gants (or tervigons+spawned gaunts or any unit of models fast enough to get in the enemys' face e.g Raveners) deploying to 'hem in' a tank/tank column against his own models/table edge/your models. This is similar to how you'd surround a troop transport before wrecking it so all the models inside have to be destroyed due to not having space to disembark.

Then bring in a Mawloc to crush the tanks against the borders/models. Remember to position your mawloc/large blast so you don't destroy any potential walls that would crush the tank(s) against. This is highly situational, but if your opponent deploys poorly or you get lucky/deployed correctly, you can potentially destroy a LOT of enemy tanks for almost no additional effort.

Even if that's not the case, a Mawloc can be used to 'push' an enemy tank towards your oncoming horde just by positioning itself on the far side of the vehicle so its shortest distance is towards your army.

Remember that placing the model on the enemy models results in an instant mishap - which gives you the Terror from the Deep roll immediately.