This weekend I will be playing in an RTT down in Pasadena,
and I have made some changes to my 1500 point Tyranid list compared to how it
looked in Stockton right after the new rule book came out. First, I want to be
able to try out a flying hive tyrant. I would run two of these guys in 5th,
so it seems silly that I wouldn’t bring them out when new rules are giving them
a boost. The flyrant will also give me another chance to try out the random
psychic powers.
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| This is what happens when you don't kill the Flyrant. All your models disappear (into its belly). |
The bad news is that adding the big bad guy himself at 1500
means I have to drop the hive guard and the prime and left me a spare 40 points
laying around. I filled the loose points by adding catalyst to the HQ tervigon
and giving the tyrant hive commander. Both of these actions are counter to what
most Tyranid pundits are suggesting. Before I go into my reasoning, here is the
full list;
Tervigon (Onslaught/Catalyst/Cluster Spines)
Tervigon (Catalyst/Cluster Spines)
10 Termagants
2 Carnifex (Twin-Linked Devourers x2)
Trygon (Toxin Sacs)
Trygon (Toxin Sacs)
The basic idea is to saturate the board with T6. This theory
worked in 5th, and it works even better now that cover is easier to
get. Add in the fact that I can give out two FNP buffs each round and you got
yourself a core that is hard to kill. Add in the ability to spawn tarpits,
screens, and most of all scoring units and you have a flexible build. If going
first the tyrant starts on the table, if I roll to go second he opts to
reserve. As my stuff moves forward, onslaught allows the Carnifex unit to both
run and shoot in the same turn. This gives me a pretty good shot at getting to
shoot their 24 TL S6 shots on turn one.
I personally opt to keep the book powers on my tervigons.
While biomancy is great, I do not use tervigons or gants offensively, and due
to the rolling of random psychic powers, I can not afford for them to not have
the buffs my force needs. For this reason I stick catalyst on both to boost
survivability where needed, and put onslaught on my HQ tervigon as this one
will typically be marching forward providing synapse for my attack creatures
(and now in sixth leaving them to rage just before they charge into combat). I
should note that as of right now I plan on using my tervigon as the warlord.
This hopefully will cause tough choices for my opponent; do they take down the
dangerous hive tyrant or do they go for the warlord victory point? The quickest
way to win a game of 40K is to give your opponent hard choices…eventually they
will choose wrong.
As many have noticed, the deployment options in 6th give
opponents the opportunity to deploy very far away. You can check out my
game against Tau to see exactly what I am talking about. To combat this I
need to be able to reliably get my tyrant and trygons onto the table from
reserve. Being able to deep strike three monstrous creatures is a great start
to breaking open a defensive castle. This is where hive commander comes in.
With hive commander I have a 59% chance of getting three units from reserve on
turn two whereas without hive commander I only have a 29% chance of getting
them all in. To me that is more valuable than giving the tyrant preferred enemy
with old adversary. The only real downside of hive commander is that it makes
it harder to hide gants off the table by reserving them.
Until today I had not found a group of gamers within an hour
of my current location, meaning my gaming bug had been itching with no way of
scratching it. So naturally I did what any hobbyist who has floor space but
won’t be living in the state long enough to justify building a full table, I
made one on the floor to test lists.
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| The floor is stained because the people who lived here before me used this room to build motorcycles. |
I used my free afternoon on Sunday to play a quick 1500
point game against my nasty Land Raider Blood Angels;
Reclusiarch
Honor Guard (4 Plasma Guns/Drop Pod)
Sanguinary Priest
5 Assault Marines
~Godhammer Pattern Land Raider
6 Death Company (6 Power Swords)
~Land Raider Redeemer (Multi-melta/Extra Armor)
5 Scouts (Sniper Rifles/Camo Cloaks)
Land Speeder (Multi-melta/Typhoon Missile Launcher)
5 Devastators (4 Missile Launchers)
I wanted to try out lots of stuff in 6th, so I
put in a little of everything I wanted to try out. This list forms I tight
castle with the priest in the Godhammer, in range to give FNP to scouts and
devastators on an objective. When turn five comes land raider cruises to
another objective and the ASM hop out. Death company and reclusiarch drive
forward killing things with their 30 WS 5 S5 reroll to hit and wound AP3
attacks while the land raiders soak up and of my opponents strong firepower.
The pod plops down wherever I need 8 plasma shots most. Unfortunately for this
list the mission rolled was ‘The Scourging’ which has six objectives.
I played the full game, meaning I did alternating terrain
and random forests and objectives. I did find that alternating terrain
placement takes forever. The other thing I found was that while a tactical game
itself, it lead to some unsavory tactics. For example, the incentive for
shooting armies is to literally take the LOS terrain and put it on the table
edge so assault armies can’t use it. Once the board starts forming up one can
throw area terrain in the clear charge lanes to slow units down. I feel a smart
player can hurt his opponent in placement much more than a smart player can
improve their situation on terrain placement.
Blood Angels won the roll to got first taking one corner of
the board in dawn of war. Tyranids deployed the HQ tervigon, trygons, and
carnifex unit deployed directly across and the troop tervigon set up in the far
corner. Objectives had random values of victory points attached with the three
in the Tyranid lair having a combined value of 9 and in the Blood Angel funpad
they were worth 6 total. Not only were the BA behind with only two scoring
units, they also needed to get the nids out of their corner because their
objectives were worth more.
Turn one BA shooting took two wounds off each Carnifex (they
had cover from a hill). The pod drops in the far corner to kill the troop
Tervigon before it can spawn more scoring units, but they only do four wounds.
Tyranids roll forward. Onslaught lets the carnifex unit get a good run and they
take out two Devastators who fail their morale and break. The troop tervigon
spawns 14 without doubles. Gants and Tervigon kill three honor guard shooting. The
tervigon finishes them off in combat. The HQ tervigon spawns gants by an
objective that blows up. Fun tip: Large blast has a radius of 2.5” but the
objective blows up if you are within 3”. If you are just between the two
distances you take no casualties. No gants died in the making of this
discovery.
With the honor guard dead the death company had to start
cruising over to the far side of the board rather than defending their corner,
if they didn’t make it over there it would be impossible to win. Devastators
regroup and move so they can shoot next turn. The scouts adjust their hiding
position so the carnifex unit can’t see them. The Land raiders can’t see the
carnifex unit due to some ruins so they combined with the speeder put four
wounds on a Trygon. It all appears to be too little too late as the monsters
are getting close. Luckily the Tyrant (who I should add got outflank for his
warlord ability) did not come in. The carnifex unit comes forward and shoots
down the speeder. The two trygons charge the land raider and makes the thing look
like a joke getting four penetrating results. Death company disembark to charge
the full wound trygon. Both tervigons spawn without doubles. Since the gants
came on from reserve the Tyranids now have six scoring units on the table.
Shooting brings down the wounded trygon but death company
only get a four on their charge! Ouch. The carnifex unit puts 18 wounds on
death company in shooting, even with FNP the unit is wiped out. From here it
was cleanup for the Tyranids who tabled the Blood Angels in turn six.
The big lesson here was that scoring units are a must. They
were last edition and with the new missions are even more important now. The second
lesson is one I learned one I had just came back to the hobby and was having
trouble fighting TH/SS Terminators with my Dark Eldar. My buddy reminded me
that the best way to kill them is not dark lances, but splinter rifles. The key
was in making enemy models roll armor saves. The same applies with any death
star or monstrous creature or when facing fateweaver. If you make them roll
armor saves they will eventually fail them. Following this, expensive models
still die, possibly more than before. Is a 35 point death company model better
than two regular ASM? I can’t tell from one game, especially a blow out like
this. What I can tell though is that models will die, and if you don’t have a
plan to protect them they will be lost points.
My biggest regret here (besides not putting the DC on the
other side of the land raider wreck) was not getting to see how FMC movement
worked due to the Tyrant coming on from the table side and only being around
for the end of the cleanup effort.
More news from this list next week as I report on its results
at the RTT this weekend.
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