Tips on taking the Tyranids vs. Chaos

[Dionysus]

On Saturday (tomorrow) I will be taking 1500 pts. of Tyranids for the first time ever against a Chaos army.

I know very little about Chaos and was wondering if some of you could give me some general tips on what would work best.

For instance, having been playing against Imperial Guard with my Tyranids recently I have usually taken 3 x 17-20 standard Hormagaunts without any biomorphs. Chaos I know are similar to Space Marines in that they have good armour saves and also better WS and Toughness than Imperial Guard so it would be helpful if somone could give a few tips regarding whether the standard troops need biomorphing to engage the Chaos effectively.

Also any other suggestions regarding other effective Tyranid creatures to take against Chaos would be welcome.

Thanks

Dio

[The Song of Spears]

(The Broodlord is a good unit if you have one. He acts mostly as a distraction as the CSM player will prolly freak seeing this guy and 10 Genestealers on his side of the board, keep this guy in good cover and the CSM player will waste a lot of fire tyring to kill him. If you dont have a Broodlord, try a walking tyrant with some tyrant guard to follow around your gaunts)
HQ A 273 1 Broodlord Flesh Hooks
10 Genestealers Extended Carapace

(This guy is to take out his mobile units, get deep into enemy lines and take out havoc squads, and generally act as a Queen in chess, lots of calculated strikes. He should be able to kill 3 marines then assault and kill 2 more, thats 5 a round just keep him out of sight of las cannons)
HQ B 219 1 Hive Tyrant Toxin Sacs / 2xTwin-linked Devourer / Enhanced Senses / Warp Field / Wings / Adrenal Glands +1 IN / Flesh Hooks / Adrenal Glands +1 WS

(This guy can kill marines pretty well, and works as a fantastic screen versus most CSM units. While he only has a 3+ save the 4 would make this meat sheild a survivor. If the CSm player field a lot of plasma or other low ap weapons, keep this guy in cover and move him straight forward. the 8 twin linked reroll wound shots will do wonders to soften up enemy lines before the gaunts hit)
Elite A 114 1 Carnifex Enhanced Senses / 2x Twin-linked Devourer / Flesh hooks

(same as above)
Elite B 114 1 Carnifex Enhanced Senses / 2x Twin-linked Devourer / Flesh hooks

(These guys are your elite kill team. Use them where you nees to take out terminators/obliterators and HQ's. Otherwise heep them the hell away from heavy bolters and autocannons)
Troops A 200 10 Genestealers Extended Carapace

(The two spine gaunt troops here are fro gumming up enemy fireing lines. Run them through cover if you can, otherwise try and blitz the CSM player with them, run them right into his face, right into teh most shooty squads. They have the numbers to prolly make it and once the shooty squad is locked in CC, you have more freedom to move about the board with other units)
Troops B 120 24 Gaunts Spine Fist

(Same as above)
Troops C 120 24 Gaunts Spine Fist

(These guys are kinda for you to use as you wish. i use them as a second wave, as since they cost more than spine gaunts, i want these guys to make it into CC in one piece. So i get the gaunts in CC, block fireing lanes and then run the Hormagaunts up and pretty much wipe out whatever they assault)
Troops D 210 15 Hormagaunts Adrenal Glands WS / Adrenal Glands IN / Toxin Sacs

(Anti tank, anti statured deamon prince. With the str 10 attack keep these guys moving foraward to provide syanpse, and use the more powerfull blast on Statured deamon princes, if they fail their save, they die, good stuff, same with terminators, obliterators, and on the regular blast, marines.)
Heavy Support 130 2 Zoranthrope Synapse Creature / Warp Blast

Total Points 1500



Why a broodlord? Well if for some reason your gaunts get out of synapse they run toward the nearest synapse creature, in this case prolly the infiltrating broodlord, which keeps them in enemy lines so when they rally they don't have far to go to get back into CC.

As usually use cover as much as possible, there should be 25% board in areas terrain with cover.

The carnifex's run through cover fast getting re-rolls and 3d6, so use that to your advantage.

the elite carnifex's are true meat shields (operation hide behind the fex's) So don't be sad when the enemy throws all he has into killing one, thats the idea, the other units will do more damage than the 114 point fex...


If the CSM is real tank heavy yo umay want to try and drop the hormagaunts and add a gunfex with a VC and BS, or add a VC to the Tyrant, or if you cant put a broodlord on the table add a HT with a VC and some guard to protect his slow ass.



I play versus Khorne and Slaanesh a lot, Khorne is easy throw lots of gaunts at him, regualr 5 point spine gaunts, that will gum him up so long that you gan safely run up genestealers as a second wave and assault him and destroy him.

Versus Slaanesh, i run lots of the same gaunts into his fireing squads, like 2~3 squads of 25 spine gaunts. They too get gummed up in the gaunt tarpit. Then you can come in with genestealers or as i like to do, 6 warrirors with deverouers and wings going through cover and shooting the squads not in CC. They are pretty ok at taking out 6 CSM in one volley of shots, not always but often get 4+ dead CSM. Nothing in Slannesh's weapons are AP 3 or 2, unless he takes a Predator or Dread, he would have to waste points in his havoc sqaud to get las cannons, when he get blastmasters for waaaay cheaper, he prolly wont. So the 114 point gun fexes can run straight at him not even in cover, getting 3+ saves the whole time they shoot and shield the other units

[minibutmighty]

Chaos is a very broad church with alot of variety of playstyles. Its quite difficult to pin down some generic anti chaos army or tactics. With each faction offering unique strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. If you could give more details regarding your opponent I would be able to help more.

From my own experiences as both a nid player and a chaos player:

1. Close combat tyranid monsterous creatures are a liability. Most Chaos players can offer up plenty of untargetable powerfists that can easily break the legs of you're tyrant after the tyranat has killed a few of the bearers mates. Concentrate on supporting your basic bugs with synapse and ranged fire. Warp blasts come into their own here.

2. If you are running gaunt heavy, upgrade to S4. You should be already striking at the same time as their intended targets, just make those count against T4.

3. Genestealers and broodlords are the temporary bane of MEQ (Marines Equivalents) The reason I say temporary is that they often lack the staying power to survive countercharges. I would take them in quantity with no upgrades.

4. Accept the fact that chaos is generally top of the food chain when it comes to rock hard characters. Don't play him at his own game and chuck monsterous creatures and other "worthy opponents" at them for cinematic purposes. Bog them down in gaunts and rippers. You don't need to kill something to take it out of the game. (And remember that if your opponent has a daemon weapon, that he must take a mastery test after he kills something with it. If he fails, its the same as a perils of the warp attack, unlikely but fun!)

[bluebugs]

okay I'm going to give you one tip as to dealing with his characters. Strength 10. If he takes a deamon prince of any kind and you throw a few Gun fexs with venomcannons and/or zanthropes with warp blast at him all you need to do is wait for him to fail any armor save test/invulnerable and he is instakilled. This would really piss off Khornate deamon princes. There is an upgrade to prevent instakill in chaos characters, but it's 35pts which only leaves 65 pts of other Deamonic gifts so most people don't take it.

[impending slaughter]

3. Genestealers and broodlords are the temporary bane of MEQ (Marines Equivalents) The reason I say temporary is that they often lack the staying power to survive countercharges. I would take them in quantity with no upgrades.

4. Accept the fact that chaos is generally top of the food chain when it comes to rock hard characters. Don't play him at his own game and chuck monsterous creatures and other "worthy opponents" at them for cinematic purposes. Bog them down in gaunts and rippers. You don't need to kill something to take it out of the game. (And remember that if your opponent has a daemon weapon, that he must take a mastery test after he kills something with it. If he fails, its the same as a perils of the warp attack, unlikely but fun!)

This is good advice, good job minibutmighty All I'd really add, is try and take down his oblits (if he has any) as a priority. They really can cause a lot of damage to nid armies in my experience. Same goes for Defilers.

okay I'm going to give you one tip as to dealing with his characters. Strength 10. If he takes a deamon prince of any kind and you throw a few Gun fexs with venomcannons and/or zanthropes with warp blast at him all you need to do is wait for him to fail any armor save test/invulnerable and he is instakilled. This would really piss off Khornate deamon princes. There is an upgrade to prevent instakill in chaos characters, but it's 35pts which only leaves 65 pts of other Deamonic gifts so most people don't take it.

Or the DP could just take stature and resilience and get T6 meaning no insta-kills. Any sane chaos player is going to either make his DP hidden (no stature) or give him rune or stature and resilience. You're better of trying to tie up DPs and Greater Daemons in large units of gaunts imo

[zealousheretic]

Watch out for daemons. Most of them are nasty as hell, and with summoning working the way it does, there's not a lot you can do to stop them. Just be aware that there could be some really nasty counter assaults in store for you.


Consider raveners if you have them. I really can't recommend ravs strongly enough, actually; they rend power armored troops, they're a threat to vehicles if you can get several of them into combat, and they're very very fast. I wouldn't give them guns or deepstrike them, they'll actually make combat faster if you can just keep them alive until they're ready to strike. Get them in alongside the big broods of spines or hormagaunts you're probably fielding and they'll kick ass.

[Mr Evil]

A Statured Daemon Prince has a toughness of 5(6), so S10 weapons will still insta-kill it.

Tyranids don't have to worry about Daemons aside from Daemonettes hitting MCs, as Genestealers will tear through them no matter what kind of Daemon they are.

[hivefleetcarrion]

beware a unit of flamers... these groups should be something that is targeted straight away. they can easily remove a large brood of gaunts/genestears/warriors per turn with the pure volume of shots. though they have kind bad range so if they do get to shoot they they should be counter charged the following turn

[Darkwand]

I thought the Warp Field gave a 2+ save even to a Winged Hive Tyrant

[Morgrad]

I thought the Warp Field gave a 2+ save even to a Winged Hive Tyrant

It does. With a Winged Tyrant you can't take Extended Carapace, but there's nothing that says anything at all about how Warp Field and Wings interact - so they both work just like they say they do!

[Lord_Teurtullian]

The broodlord trick works well. I personally used to freak out when I saw 10 genesteelers making their way towards me, and with the lord it gets worse.

For me though, the last time I lost to Tyranids it really was about the numbers. Minibutmighty's right - Choas is too varied to really specify a single tactic against. But Chaos shares one universal aspect: they're generally small armies. The average Chaos player wields a very specialized and expensive army, and won't have the amount of weaponry to take down a well-built and well-played Tyranid horde army.

In my last game at the Chicago GT, the Tyranid player I was facing had half the table filled with just all sorts of crap. I could take down maybe half the synapse, but his well-built net weathered that blow. I ended up surrounded and ripped to shreds by everything.

Oh yes, lictors. Destroy havoc squads with them.