How To Serve Man
With thanks to Warpshadow. This article is the beginning of a series on specific enemy threats and how best to deal with them. Some of the armies here will come from requests on forums such as Warpshadow, while others will come from reading battle reports, watching people at tournaments, or simply from my own fevered imagination. Well, maybe not. The idea is to take one kind of an enemy army and figure out how to handle it. This is in keeping with my axiom of Be Prepared. If you do your homework and plan ahead, when one of these armies presents itself, you will be ready.

A Horde of Space Marines?
Recently a fellow Tyranid player wrote in to Warpshadow asking how to beat a horde of Space Marines. He's been playing against his friend, the Space Marine player for a while, and has gotten very good at taking down all of his vehicles, to the point that his friend is fielding just hordes and hordes of Space Marines, with no vehicles at all. He uses a lot of Tactical squads and backs them up with a couple assault squads, each with an Independent Character. With all those models on the board, each getting a 3+ save, he's having a hard time getting into the lines through all the Bolter fire. Even when he does get in, his Monstrous Creatures are getting worked over by Librarians with Force Weapons and simple powerfists in the squads. The Tyranid player went on to explain what forces he had available and ask for help in how to defeat the Space Marine Horde.

Let's take a look at this enemy from a "Big Picture" perspective. Horde Marines? What does that tell us? Well, horde means a lot and marines means 3+ saves. Marines also means expensive, so if you really do have a lot, that means you won't have points for much (or any, really) other stuff. No fancy toys, limited numbers of assault squads, few or no vehicles. (Too many assault marines or vehicles means you don't have a lot of guys. One Predator equals a good-sized squad of Marines.) In turn that means that they take up a fair amount of space on the board and won't be very mobile. That, in turn, tells us they are likely to be a shooting army, since assault armies that can't move are just dead. It also tells us that they'll mostly be armed with Bolters (it's hard to make a horde of Marines if you only have minimum squads of 5 or 6) instead of heavy weapons. Takeaway: firepower will be spread out and primarily basic weapons, not heavies. Little mobility and an emphasis on shooting. Well, what do we have to combat that?

I'll start by looking at this from a Tyranid-centric point of view. (I play them, and so does the original poster of the question.) After that, however, I'll take a brief look at it from the point of view of other armies, to see what they can do.

Tyranids Well, we'll want something that has immunity, or at least resistance to, the basic Bolter. That means 4+ saves will be golden here. Simply giving Genestealers Carapace will roughly double their life expectancy here. (It won't effect the Heavy Weapon Casualties, generally, but with large squads, it should do nicely.)

Alternately, fast movers like Hormagaunts can get in on turn 2, which keeps you safe from a lot of shooting. Although Scuttling Gaunts are technically just as fast as Hormagaunts, they are at a disadvantage here. The fact that they start closer to the enemy (due to that Scout movement) means that they are going to be in range on turn 1, whereas Hormagaunts will generally be starting more than 24 inches away. This means that if you don't get the first turn, Hormagaunts will take much less fire. In addition, the 12" charge range and Fleet of foot almost guarantees that the Hormagaunts will be able to assault from beyond Rapid Fire range. The poor Gaunts, on the other talon, will be well within that nasty zone. (Since Rapid Fire weapons can move and still Rapid Fire, this gives a maximum range of 18" for that Rapid Firing unit to move up and mow down Tyranids. With Fleet, Horms can move 6+1d6+12" which equals 19-24 inches. The Gaunts will move 6+1d6+6" which equals 13-18 inches, just inside that danger zone! While they will stile tie up the enemy on turn 2, they will have lost a considerably larger number of models than the Hormagaunts would have.

Warriors with Extended Carapace will also be fairly well protected against massed Bolter fire. Monstrous Creatures will be nearly immune to it as well, and even Zoanthropes will be able to stand against it.

Okay, now we have some ideas about how to protect yourself from the Bolters, now how do we kill the Space Marines? Rending Claws are quite effective, and both Genestealers and Warriors can be given Rending Claws and a 4+ armor save, meaning that they'll be effective both offensively and defensively. Monstrous Creatures are also effective both defensively and offensively here, you'll just have to make sure that those Force Weapons and powerfists don't get you.

Let's look at a list or two that would work well here...

List 1: conventional Tyranid army
-Warriors, with some Rending and Scything Action. If you get Leaping, you might consider having them hid behind terrain during the first turn. The second turn, when your fast movers hit the enemy lines, you can start moving up and trying to find advantageous fights.

-Hormagaunts, keep them cheap. Move up to engage the enemy and fix him in place, so he can't do as much to attack you, since the combats will block a lot of his shooting and his own units will be getting in the way of counterattackers. I'd recommend spending 35-50% of your total points on this section, so you have enough to tie up the enemy and block his counterattacks. Note: don't give these guys lots of biomorphs. You want them as cheap as possible so that you can afford to take some Wounds and still have enough models to swamp the enemy.

-Monstrous Creatures. Several Carnifi could be very effective here. If you keep them under 130pts, you can have several and they'll do nearly as much damage as a 230pt Carnifex. This is one situation where a Tail weapon might be worthwhile, but I think there are much better things to use. Initiative will be a must to go before those powerfists, and Dual Scything Talons are a necessity. Tusked might be useful for a cheap extra attack on the charge. The biggest thing, though, is to keep them together, or support them with those Warriors. If you simply charge a single Carnifex into a large squad of Marines, that one guy with the powerfist is going to be able to swing at you quite a few times before you can take him down. There are two saving graces against the Librarians, however. The first is that if you have them tied up with Hormagaunts, they won't be able to get the charge against your big guys. That's one less attack AND it can keep them from getting a +1S for Furious Charge, which makes it easier to Wound you. The second is that they are independent characters, meaning that they can only participate in a combat when they are in base contact, and they can be targeted separately from any other units in the combat. So when the Librarian gets into contact with your Carnifex, you'll still have to weather one round of attacks, but then you can focus everything on him to take him down as quickly as possible. If you have followed my advice, you should also have several Warriors or another Carnifex to help you out here, too.

List 2: Genestealer Assault
-Broodlord or Winged Hive Tyrant. The Broodlord would be more fluffy and harder for the enemy to get into contact with, but either one will be very effective at cutting a swath through the Space Marines. I'd definitely go for Initiative 6 on the Hive Tyrant, to make sure it is going before Librarians. Again, even though the Hive Tyrant is going to be killing a lot of Space Marines, remember to support it, so those power fists don't have time to wear it down. (10 Man squad attacked by a Hive Tyrant. First round, Tyrant kills 3. Powerfist Sergeant strikes back and causes a Wound. Second round, the Tyrant kills 3 more and takes another Wound from the Powerfist Sergeant. Round three, the Tyrant kills 2 more and takes another Wound from the Powerfist. Round four, it kills the last two, but now it's only got one Wound left. Not too good.) If you coordinate assaults from the Hive Tyrant with a brood or two of Genestealers, you will wipe out the squad pretty quickly, which means less damage to your side, which means you can do it again next turn, and the turn after that, and the turn after that.

-Genestealers. Carapace is a must-have item here. One possibility is to give your lead broods Carapace, and leave the other ones normal. This is cheaper, which means you can buy more Genestealers, and it gives the enemy a bad choice. If they shoot at the closest Genestealer broods, the Genestealers will get an armor save, so they won't be able to kill as many. On the other talon, if they target the farther broods, they will be able to ignore their armor save, but they'll be out of Rapid Fire range and they'll get charged earlier by the lead Genestealer broods. Scuttlers is an option for your lead broods (I find that if everybody has Scuttlers, they just get in the way of each other. If you do get Scuttlers, however, while it puts you into charge range on turn 2, it means that if they get first turn, they can shoot you fairly well, whereas only Heavy Weapons would be able to hit you if you didn't take the free move. If you have broods smaller than 8, I'd recommend coordinating their assaults with something else, even another brood. If you have larger broods, go right in and start munching, the number of Space Marines knock down should be sufficient to protect you.

Tactics and General Lists
Okay, so there we have a couple of specific lists planned to take down those Space Marine Horde armies. There is another way, however. How about instead of changing lists, we change tactics? Sometimes it's not possible to change your list. You may not have the models necessary to make one of the above lists. You might also be in a tournament situation, where you won't be able to change the list from one game to the next. Alternately, if you use the same list all the time, the above lists can put you at a disadvantage against certain other opponents, such as Imperial Guard, or even regular Space Marines with Vehicle Support. By changing your tactics, it gives you more flexibility with the same list. To plan out our tactics, we need to take a look at what Horde Marines are and what would give us an edge.

From our "Big Picture" look at Horde Space Marines, we know a few things. It will be a large army in terms of numbers of models and in terms of how much space it will take up. In addition, few of the models will have special movement abilities, so it will be fairly slow. It will feature lots of basic weapons, with Heavy Weapons mostly spread out, rather than concentrated in one area.

Okay, knowing this, we can make some plans. With low mobility and a large army, they will be vulnerable to higher mobility used to concentrate force. Move so that your army engages 1/3 of the enemy army at one end of their line. The sheer size of their army will make it more awkward to get reinforcements into the area as the units block each other. A variation on this theme is to have some resilient elements (several Monstrous Creatures or lots of cheap Gaunts, for example) engage the middle of the army, while your heavier hitters concentrate on one side. That is even more effective at keeping the Space Marines from reinforcing their squads, which means you can munch on those squads a few at a time, instead of attacking everywhere at once. If you have 2/3 of your army facing 1/3 of theirs, you will not only win, you will win with very few casualties, which lets you continue to outnumber the rest of their army as it arrives piecemeal.

Knowing that the Heavy Weapons will mostly be spread out gives us some options as well. If we put our nasty creatures (Whether they are Carnifi or Genestealers or Warriors or whatever) concentrated in one area, we'll be limiting the amount of fire that can take them out. Let's say we concentrate them all one one flank. The flank across from us will be able to shoot, but the center may have some of their Line of Sight cut off by terrain, and they may even be out of range of some weapons, while the far flank will almost certainly be out of range. Congratulations, you've just cut their effective firepower by more than 50%!

Other Armies
Tyranids are not the only army out there, and Hordes of Space Marines can cause headaches for a lot of different people. I'll give some specifics for different armies in a minute, but first, let's take another look at a Space Marine Horde and what it means in general.

Lots of basic weapons. Well, anything that can handle being shot by a S4 AP5 weapon will do nicely. Whether due to armor or toughness, avoiding being mulched by Bolters is a very good thing and will dramatically reduce the Horde's effectiveness. Fewer heavy weapons also means vehicles should do pretty well against this army.

Low Mobility and a large army. As mentioned previously, higher mobility and concentration of force will something very difficult for the horde to combat. Fast moving units or vehicles will do very well against this army.

An Emphasis on Shooting. The shooty emphasis that the Space Marine Horde has is something I didn't really mention with Tyranids, since they have fewer shooting options. On the other talon, other armies can easily be more effective at shooting than the Horde. If you are shootier than they are, they'll have to try to assault you once they realize they can't win a shootout. Since they are relatively slow, this puts you at a big advantage, not only because you are dictating the battle to them, but also because all those Rapid fire weapons won't be able to touch you until they get within 12 inches.

Other Armies

Eldar
Here you are spoiled for choice. If you like assaults, take Banshees, preferably in transports so you can concentrate on one side of the Horde and cut them down as they try to reinforce their battle brothers. Swooping Hawks with a tooled up Exarch can also be effective here, as can Scorpions to a lesser extent. For shooting, there are a plethora of good options. Dark Reapers give you range and serious killing. Swooping Hawks and Warp Spiders, despite less effective weapons, have very good mobility, which lets them take more advantage of cover and lets them concentrate their firepower better. Star Cannons kill Marines very effectively, and Vypers give you more mobility as well. In addition, Falcons have lots of firepower if they don't have to fly fast to avoid glancing hits, so put them to one side of the enemy force to limit the return fire and start cutting through Space Marines.

Dark Eldar
High mobility through Raiders or webway portals will be very effective against the Space Marine Horde. Alternately, you can simply outshoot them and make them come to you.

Chaos
Much like Eldar, you have a lot of choices. Just use effective firepower or superior mobility and it should see you through. Even with a shooty Chaos force, you will probably have some effective counter-assault troops. When the Horde arrives, use them to hit one part of the Horde at a time to overwhelm that area, rather than spreading out your attacks.

Imperial Guard
Definitely go with the shooting here. Tanks will be very effective, killing a good chunk of Space Marines with each hit and, with such a large army, even scatters should hit something useful. The numbers of inexpensive Heavy weapons you can get should also stand you in good stead.

Orks
This'll be a tough one, unless you go with Speed Freekz and use that mobility to concentrate on one part of the Horde at a time. With regular Orks, you'll have to figure out a way to limit return fire as you close in. Perhaps using some Trukkboyz and Bikes to engage some of the lead elements and/or some buggies or trakks to block Line of Sight to your main body of troops.

Space Marines
This is going to be another tough fight, but you can use some of the same ideas above. Use mobility to concentrate force, use superior firepower and make them come to you. Terminators will be effective here, as they can handle most of the regular attacks, and the Powerfists or Lightning claws will tear a swath through a squad. Make sure any assaults you make are supported, however, as being swamped by Space Marines is a bad thing for anybody.

To see part 2 of this article, with specific armylists and tactics, please click here.

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