Tyranids Vs New DE, Thoughts and Concerns based on Experience

Old school here with a few thoughts on Tyranid concerns when facing the new Dark Eldar. I know that when the word first dropped on poison weapons, dark lances and that agonizers would still wound the same way, it caused some discomfort for Tyranid players. How would this effect our monstrous creature build. Can they out manuever and out shoot us and maybe even beat us in CC?
.
As somebody who has run Dark Eldar before and also played tons of games against them, I am already all too familiar with lance spam and and wyches and what they can do to our army. Recently, I played a game against SeerK over at Craftworld Lansing and got a small dose of the new dynamic brought on by their new weapons and vehicle manueverability. The shot above is from a game we played using Dawn of War - as you can see they can pull a pretty crazy turbo boost from the board edge.

Now, this is no way a complete list of concerns and thoughts as it only represents one game's experience (one where seerk was tired from donating plasma and playing other opponents all day), but there are some things we have that make us awesome against DE and some things to look out for.

.

First off, yes, troops with poison guns can really hurt our MCs, trying to pull cover is irrelevant as it is the weight of fire and the amount of saves caused that will whittle you down. While the poison weapons hurt, the shard carbine is even scarier to me. The carbines managed to take five wounds from my Tervigon in a single volley - a fearsome prospect when your nearby guants can get rocked hard by her loss. Don't get me wrong the Tervigon still shines here as she breeds Guants, whose shooting is deadly to DE troops (torrent wyches to death rather than allowing them CC shelter) and to DE vehicles in large doses (wrecked the only raider I shot at with them, alien bolt pistols FTW)! I'm not sure right now about the answer to the poison shooting other than not to let them get there with your own firepower.

.

Wyches are great in CC, and with an agonizer can really drop MCs quickly. The best way to deal with them is to A) crash their raider and watch half die in the crash (duh) or B) let them charge a guant screen, easily kill it in one round of combat and then light them up with your other anti-infantry firepower. FNP will protect them from some of your wounds, but generally not enough to stop them from being dropped below recoverable levels.

.

This brings me to leadership. Most of the Dark Eldar codex has low LD and everytime they suffer a vehicle destoyed result they run the risk of running. Every time they get shot up (like the example above), they run the risk of running away. Devourers and the use of deathleaper can make this even more effective against them. Doom also loves to eat Dark Eldar (taste the same as they did last codex YUM!). In our game, LD was an issue when the doom ate most of his wyches and the Duke ran away from some fleshborer shots.

.

On the reverse side, they also have vehicle wargear that can give you a negative leadership modifier which isn't a big deal when fearless or within synapse, but it can suck when your non synapse models run away from a little shooting themselves due to this effect.

( a picture of the Duke running away)

.

A big concern for us I think is the Dark Lance, considering how our MCs have a hard time gaining the old 4+ cover save. Now the good thing is that the raiders are more expensive and thus there will be less lance spam, the bad news is that ravagers can still hustle and blast us with them. The addition of Ravagers to their army makes targeting the raiders a tougher proposition in the early turns as we will need to preserve our MCs for the later turns. DS'ing units and pods themselves if close enough can put the hurt on ravagers, but your hive guard will likely struggle for range as Ravagers are likely to have nightshields (limiting you to 18" range against them). Blasters in Trueborn squads on venoms are deadly for nearly the same reasons.

.

The best answer here is to try to get yourself in a position where you can at least shake lock the ravagers and still shoot down some of the key raiders (shooty nid armies with harpies and tyrannofexes can handle that and drop nids with trygon primes or dakkafexes can handle this as well.)

.

Drop Nids in general can come in and disrupt the Dark Eldar vehicles while also landing enough MCs to saturate the DE lines and get the Termagaunts into range to gun them down when the DE are disembarked. Shooty nids do the same but it takes a little longer as the DE cross the board. Walking deathstar lists will suffer as the DE can outmaneuver and shoot them down.

.

So what does it all mean? Well, based on this game, there are still a lot of unknown variables to deal with - like how bad will the crucible of malediction suck for our multiple psychic MCs? In general Drop lists should continue to take the same take-all-comers lists they have been successful with, just don't be afraid to get in there and mix it up and bring enough MCs or units that shoot on the drop and you'll be just fine. Shooty Nid lists just need to shoot and move to the sound of the exploding vehicles, paying attention to the movement phase to ensure the charges, countercharges won't overwhelm your army. Pure Deathstar Lists? ... you were never balanced to begin with and DE will punish you the way your other opponents should have already.

.

The bottom line is that this codex, like any other, should not make you change your whole take-all-comers and the way it works (unless it was unbalanced and didn't work already lol!) or sell your army (I have seen this already on the forums ... more cheap Ebay Nids for me!). What it does call you as a Nid player in 5th edition to do, is adjust tactics when playing the Dark Eldar, much like you would against other Xenos players with unique builds; just like other armies do when they have to face Nids ;) Their army is crap in the hands of a crap general just like Nids, but just like us, a good DE general will be a fearsome opponent for us and anyone else in the 40k universe.

.

Once again, its all about how the game is played. I hope to get many more games in with SeerK as he was not feeling so good during our first game and due to a small error lost the game a million kill points to 3 (literally a million lol). That's what it means to have a Glass cannon and I bet I will have some tough games in the future as he breaks in the new codex!

.

How about you. What are your fears and concerns? Any nid players have experience against the new DE? Any other armies with experience against them? Have some insight or more games under your belt. Let's hear what you think and what your observations are. The floor is yours.