Explodey nids iz killin my boyz

[potatoman]

I used to get bothered by tyranids that used tunnels gratuitously, frequently ambushing units - killing them before could even hit the retreat button. I think a lot of these players were pretty average, I just haven't worked on on my strategy enough (with experience I expect to be able to counter it).

Then I encounter a TS 32 nid player who spams spore mines. Someone else on ork forum mentioned they'd be happy for nids to spam spore mines, and meant they wouldn't be teching up to carnifex. This guy pretty much just builds spore mines (and couple of cheap capping squads), and carnifexes towards the end. I've decided I'd much rather deal with a normal nid army, because I can't see any way to stop spore mines. I build big shootas and put in a building, spore mines run up to building and take out half squad anyway. I can't afford to be checking every single squad 100% of the time to see if I need to flee, that's basically what ended up happening. As soon as spore mines appeared, if you can't afford to full time micromanage that squad, you have to flee it. Granted I don't build bombaz much, maybe they could do something to stop them.

You can retreat your squad, and the spore mines being immune to suppression can chase you right back into your base and destroy the squad anyway. I don't know if this was a bug when this happened, really doesn't seem right they can go into your base and blow up any units that had retreated in this manner.

If a spore mine goes off in the middle of your clump of slugga boyz, and kills the majority of them - that seems fine, strategy involved. When it comes down to squad 1v1, any single ork squad vs spores, seems OP there's no effective way to deal with it. It would be nice to keep my army together, and destroy spore mines before they could do damage - but if enemy is sending out cheap units to cap all the points, you are forced to split your army up, which is where things mess up.

The commander deals with them fine, though they just run off - same with vehicles.

Has anyone else experienced this, or can offer solutions? Before I saw a tyranid player using them so effectively, I didn't think they could actually be used in such a frustrating manner. Clearly with his 82-20 win/loss ratio he found himself onto a good thing, he wouldn't be using this strategy if in general orks could defeat it.

[Goobers]

The counter to Spore Mines is anything that isn't a Slugga boy, but basically the game comes down to attrition so make sure you never lose whole squads.

Spore Mines cost 100req 20power, a Slugga Boy reinforces for 22 req, so you can practically rebuild a Slugga Squad from nothing for less cost than it took for the mines to blow them up. Slugga Nobz won't be killed by the spore mines so there is a way to ensure they will never be completely killed off.

Best tactics are engage and bait them with your commander, and blow them up with Shoota Boyz or at least whittle the spore mines down enough to minimize the damage. Going to need two squads of Shootaz to do it though.



Moral of the story however is to toss a volley of stikkbombz at any tunnels post haste.

[ImmortalChaos]

Stikkbommaz will survive the blast from a full squad of spore mines. Make 1 extra slugga or shoota (I prefer a shoota, which keeps your mine-vulnerable targets spread out enough not to get killed too easily), then just focus on making stikkies. Harass the 'nids power farm as much as possible, and eventually tech up for a deff dread or commander wargear to beat whatever he gets in T2.

[cyborgZero]

^ what they said, although a Nob slugga will survive, if all the other sluggas die, that is 6 * 22 = 132 req, but no cost of power. As it was mentioned, use range or grenades to set them off, and remember, they are fast and you will not outrun them.

Oh, also wartruck works like a charm.