Advice on a list vs a specific meta

[mjt2017]

I play 40k regularly with three friends. I need to write a tyranid (or tyranid/GSC) list which can deal effectively with the following three builds:

1) An ork player who takes 180 boyz led by warboss, with painboy and big mek with custom force field. Then 15 lootas shielded by grots. He just swarms the board with boyz. Uses da jump to get a turn 1 charge.

2) A custodes player who basically takes an army of custodian guard, couple of shield captains on dawneagle jetbike

3) An iron hands player who to be fair takes toned down lists to compensate for how broken iron hands are. So lots of scouts, couple of character dreadnoughts with lascannons which I can't target, some razorbacks with assault cannons, couple of land speeders with assault cannons, one thunderfire cannon.

At the moment, one of the builds I'm toying with is:

Hive fleet kronos (2 battalions)

Malanthrope
2 Neurothropes
Old one eye
20 Termagants
20 Termagants

20 Termagants

20 Termagants

20 Termagants

20 Termagants

20 Gargoyles
20 Gargoyles

6 Hive guard
6 Hive guard
Red terror
2 Biovores

Cult 4AE (patrol)

Magus
Neophyte hybrids

The aim being to swarm the board with gaunts and gargoyles and try to hem the enemy in by walking gargoyles 1.1" away from him in a strung out line, so he can't move anywhere. Shoot stuff with the hive guard. My characters get get up close cos they'll be shielded by all the gribblies, so I can do smiting. Old one eye is a counterattack unit. E.g. vs custodes, if they charge me with a big unit of custodian guard I can counterattack with OOE, fight twice and hopefully do some serious damage. The C4AE is there for access to vect BUT do I really need this?

Alternatively, I could go with some variation of the swarmlord + stealers build (I have 60 stealers)?

Any thoughts would be much appeciated. Feel free to rip me to shreds and suggest something else I could try

[No One]

I don't think you've got a game against the Orks: bodyblocking competent horde melee is basically impossible, let alone doing that and blocking Da Jump. Then it's a massive pile of effective anti-infantry, and you've got an entirely infantry army with no anti-infantry of your own.

Depending on mission, seems fine into Custodes (though they have high quality and reasonable weight of attacks, they shouldn't have enough or the mobility to contest objectives). And maybe into the IH? Depends I think: IH have a lot of strong anti-infantry firepower, especially from the sounds of it that list. But it's also got hostage targets/units vulnerable to combat, and nerfs to doctrines hits that style of list. So...maybe?

But really, I think Swarmlord+stealers will do better by you: doesn't auto lose into Orks, take them as Behemoth to cut down Custodes and IH, and you've solid hostage plays against IH (if you don't, I don't think your current list would work either).

Even if you don't, there's no real reason for everything to be Kronos, over say 6++/reroll advance custom Fleet for the gribblies, then just Kronos for HG.

[mjt2017]

Mar 21, 2020 3:38:13 GMT No One said:

I don't think you've got a game against the Orks: bodyblocking competent horde melee is basically impossible, let alone doing that and blocking Da Jump. Then it's a massive pile of effective anti-infantry, and you've got an entirely infantry army with no anti-infantry of your own.

Depending on mission, seems fine into Custodes (though they have high quality and reasonable weight of attacks, they shouldn't have enough or the mobility to contest objectives). And maybe into the IH? Depends I think: IH have a lot of strong anti-infantry firepower, especially from the sounds of it that list. But it's also got hostage targets/units vulnerable to combat, and nerfs to doctrines hits that style of list. So...maybe?

But really, I think Swarmlord+stealers will do better by you: doesn't auto lose into Orks, take them as Behemoth to cut down Custodes and IH, and you've solid hostage plays against IH (if you don't, I don't think your current list would work either).

Even if you don't, there's no real reason for everything to be Kronos, over say 6++/reroll advance custom Fleet for the gribblies, then just Kronos for HG.

Thanks for the reply. Can you explain what hostage targets / hostage plays means though please?

[No One]

Wrapping, tri point etc: it's where you physically prevent a model from falling back from combat with you, keeping the unit safe from shooting. So razorbacks are good hostage targets, because they're big and easy to trap with units/terrain, and don't have Fly or any other means to get out of combat.