Usermail - Trouble beating Daemons with Nids

HH Wrote: "Hi, I'm not sure if you take usermail or if you offer list help, but I saw you were running Nids and I saw your bug list last week and I was wondering if you could help me. I cannot win with my tyranids to save my life! It doesn't amtter who I play, but I really have problems with daemons. My buddy who I play a lot uses Khorne and Tzeench units with Plague zombies as troops (bearers?). I always try to do the 3+ deepstrike trick from my Tyrant to counter his deploymet, but it seems like he just stomps me with fire from his units and then assaults me with Juggernaughts and a Bloodthirster as I come on. I don't know if people normally think demons are overpowered, but they seem to be more than a match for my tyranids. I usually run the same list no matter what and tend to play at 1750-1850. I always bring 2 groups of 3 hive guard, 2 trygons and a bunch of genestealers, a tyrant with wings and the heavy barbed strangler and fill the rest of my points in from there. I have been using carnifexes as tervigons, but no longer like them because they get killed very early. I also always run venomthropes because I like the save they give me. How would you beat the demons with YOUR nids since we seem to run similar lists? Thanks in advance, HH."

.

Reply: I have not played very many games with my Nids, but I am always happy to reply to mail from our followers and I will try to help you as best I can. I think you might be running into a little problem in the deployment. A while ago we did an article called "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" and the Hive Commander deployment in this case is just that.

.

Daemons have the advantage and disadvantage of coming in via deep strike, whether this is an advantage against you is completely up to you. Since you said he fills his troops in with Plague Bearers and then runs a Bloodthirster and Bloodcrushers, i am assuming his Tzeentch units are coming in the form of Princes, maybe heralds or flamers - all pretty mean units when tooled out right and in this reply I will assume he is using the nastiest ones.

.

I take Hive Commander in take all comers because there are times when it gives me a very useful ability and there are times when I only use it for the Doom's pod - you don't use doom, so sometimes it is just going to be a less useful ability to you, but I would keep it. Against daemons I recommend you start everything on the board - he cannot assault you out of deepstrike and shouldn't be able to put enough of your units down in the turn he arrives to make a real dent in your force.

.

You are going to want to deploy in a spearhead type formation (all together with the fastest and most assault oriented units out front. Keep your venomthropes in the middle to give what scant protection you can get from them available. He will then either deploy in a way that will enable him to gun you down (bad move on his part here) with CC units ready to counter assault OR he will put his big nasties out front and try to box you in and make you make bad decisions about who you should assault first. Either way, your plan should be the same - mass assault what you can first and make sure your units are able to mutually support each other.

.

Since you asked how I would do it with my army, I will use units and tactics from my list to show you how I would do it. I would corner up in my spearhead with my two trygon primes out front with the regular trygon. My genestealers would be in behind them followed by the winged tyrant and the hive guard. I will say I am bringing two venomthropes instead of my Doom just for your benefit. If he deploys within reach, I would make my fleeting 5 units move out and assault what they can reach. If he splits his deepstrike so he has units within reach in two direction, push the majority of your forces towrd the most threatening target. I would go with trygon prime/ trygon and a unit of stealers toward the dangerous threats and a trygon prime and stealers toward anything else you can reach.

.

Remember that your Tyrant is a support MC and he is most useful using paroxysm and assisting your assaults with his lash whip if need be.

.

Now if your opponent has set up for your inititial charge to be countered by his bloodthirter of Bloodcrushers, you now know where the tyrant needs to be supporting.

.

You should crush whatever you charge turn 1 and hopefully get a good consolidation result. If you have popped his shooters or have dented his shooting ability badly then consolidate back toward your starting point to make him bring his CC units to you and to disable him from dropping into your units. If you are playing objectives, just keep them in mind, but there is no hurry to get there right now.

.

If you get stuck in that first combat, then you are just going to have to sit there.

.

Now when the big nasties come and they will, keep in mind that they are going to do some serious damage and you will likey lose your big snakes or at least one-two of them. Keep the venomthropes near to help lower the amount of attacks you are taking if you can. Remember also that while you should never attempt to paroxysm the Bloodthirster, your lashwhip works on him just fine - if you can manage a counter assault or a regular assault on him with the tyrant and stealers, he will go down fast. The bloodcrushers can suffer from paroxysm and can get nerfed by the lashwhip, but with their high number of attacks you will have to be a little more careful about how you attack them and you may want to dump more into that fight - be weary of how he is set up with them and think 2-3 turn ahead on how they might assault you to prevent yourself from being caught with you pants down.

.

All this while, the massive amounts of CC madness on the board ought to be allowing your other units to move pretty freely. In my case, if the tervi is spitting out gaunts, they can either move towrd objective that are not held or they can become bubble wrap to prevent his units from counter assaulting my Trygons and stealers - or to provide cover for the stealers at least.

.

This will not be a simple fight and you will not come out clean, but with massed assaults coming from you with fleet units, supported by the tyrant you should have control of the momentum of the game. You should also be able to at least deal with the worst of his Tzeentch and Khorne units. The game should pretty much be decided by turn 3 in terms of who has the most deadliest units left and at that point, you should be playing for objectives supporting your gaunts and what is left of your stealers with whatever trygons you have left or with your tyrant, which is hopefully enough to play through his Plague Bearers. If there are no objectives, the game can get a little crazy, but I think with a ground deployment, you will be on top of the momentum and on top of the game.

.

I hope this has helped. Like I said, I am still pretyy new with the Nids and am trying to make them work myself. Whenever you play your next game please send me a battle report and I will gladly post it. You may even get some great feedback on this from the blog since I am also posting this response!

.

- Old School Terminator.