Dark Eldar: Nemesis part 3 – Tyranids

Dark Eldar: Nemesis part 3 – Tyranids

So with thoughts swimming through my head and a new army forming in my head, it’s time to head back to nemeses. Thanks for your support for the nemesis blogs I’ve had huge readership for it and calls for army x and army y. So far I’ve concentrated on the poor matchups for dark elder. However let’s switch this around. The other end of the spectrum was…. Tyranids. So let’s have a look at them shall we?

The Past

Poor Tyranids. Good against guard this army as one of the staples of mid-5^th. Unfortunately this abruptly stopped when Dark Eldar appeared. All the Nids strengths, High Toughness, mass infantry producing monstrous creatures, outflanking genestealers, the doom of malantai! All of this went to paste against dark elder.

The longest game I had against nids in 5^th Ed last 5 turns (every other lasted 3/4) and this was because a genestealer unit was hiding away behind a building. Against a well-built dark elder army, Nids had no chance. 6 Venoms on average do 8 wounds against creatures with a 3+ save. 3 ravagers add either 5 or 2.5 (depending on cover)

This often resulted in all the hive guard dying or a couple of bigger creatures biting the dust. What’s more when nids did get to combat they had to fight a fearless hellion unit with hit and run.

This was the most one sided battle in 5^th

Whats Changed?

However a small ray of hope has emerged! And that word is…… Flyers.

The nid staple in 6^th is the flying hive tyrant, a beast with the ability to avoid venom fire a bit and dish out hurt to 2 vehicles a turn. I lost my first ever game against nids recently and it was these two who were the cause. Being able to avoid venom fire is the key. It’s a lottery to see if these guys get shot and if they don’t, the dark eldar are having problems.

So does this mean Nids are now ultra-competitive against Dark elder? Not a chance.

Nids used to be able to shore up there army using psychic powers. This is hard to do when a farseer is stopping the psychic goodness. 6^th hasn’t decreased the amounts of shots coming from dark elder it’s increased it. There are still plenty of dark lances winging about too and the warp hunter I use can kill the big units of gargoyles that are popping up in a shot.

Let’s settle on the Hive Tyrant for a minute. And take an example with my army. Each venom and each trueborn squad I use has 12 shots this would normally translate into 2 hits per shot. So each time a tyrant is being shot by these its taking a grounding test. In my current list I have 8 of such units and a sky firing quad gun. In 9 rolls of 3+ you’re likely to be grounded 3 times

It’s still not looking good.

To beat dark elder, Nids need things to go for them and they need to not fail their grounding rolls. If they can keep a tyrant up they have a chance. Issue is that dark elder are so manoeuvrable that this firepower will always be at their disposal.

It’s still looking bad for nids!

The verdict

5^th Ed 1/10

6^th Ed 3.5/10

This is still a matchup tyranids are gunna struggle with. Fortunatly not many venom spam lists are around atm but as dark eldar once again gets more popular tyranids place at the top may once again take a beating.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Necrons are up next

Till then, tata