Sunday, February 19, 2012

Hive Mind Triumphant

Still my favorite 40k image. Thank you Jeff Porter

Yesterday Dustin, tau4eva, and I attended the monthly 1850 tournament at Gamers Sanctuary. I was super pumped to bring out my Tyranids again as I haven't played them in a few months. We had 11 people total playing, so one person got a bye each round.





My list:

HQ: Tervigon (1#, 195 pts)
   1 Tervigon, 195 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; Bonded Exoskeleton; Claws & Teeth; Synapse Creature; Brood Progenitor; Psyker; Shadow in the Warp; Spawn Termagants; Cluster Spines; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs; Dominion; Catalyst)

HQ: Tervigon (1#, 195 pts)
   1 Tervigon, 195 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; Bonded Exoskeleton; Claws & Teeth; Synapse Creature; Brood Progenitor; Psyker; Shadow in the Warp; Spawn Termagants; Cluster Spines; Adrenal Glands; Toxin Sacs; Dominion; Catalyst)

Troops: Genestealer Brood (19#, 266 pts)
   19 Genestealer Brood, 266 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Reinforced Chitin; Rending Claws; Brood Telepathy; Fleet; Infiltrate; Move Through Cover)

Troops: Genestealer Brood (8#, 112 pts)
   8 Genestealer Brood, 112 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Reinforced Chitin; Rending Claws; Brood Telepathy; Fleet; Infiltrate; Move Through Cover)

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
   2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Claws & Teeth; Hardened Carapace; Impaler Cannon; Instinctive Behaviour - Lurk)

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
   2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Claws & Teeth; Hardened Carapace; Impaler Cannon; Instinctive Behaviour - Lurk)

Elite: Hive Guard Brood (2#, 100 pts)
   2 Hive Guard Brood, 100 pts (Unit Type: Infantry; Claws & Teeth; Hardened Carapace; Impaler Cannon; Instinctive Behaviour - Lurk)

Heavy Support: Carnifex Brood (3#, 570 pts)
   3 Carnifex Brood, 570 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; Bonded Exoskeleton; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Fearless; Living Battering Ram; TL Devourer w/Brainleech Worms x2)

Heavy Support: Trygon (1#, 210 pts)
   1 Trygon, 210 pts (Unit Type: Monstrous Creature; 2x Scything Talons; Bio-electric Pulse; Bonded Exoskeleton; Instinctive Behaviour - Feed; Deep Strike; Fearless; Fleet; Subterranean Assault; Adrenal Glands)

Total Roster Cost: 1848


From the start I knew this would be a tough list to play with. It is not that optimized - carnifexes are EXTREMELY overpriced in 5th Edition. They should probably cost 130 points for each one with guns, or have a 2+ save, or both. With FNP from the tervigons they're pretty sweet... but can't do as much as they should.

The general plan was to infiltrate the genestealers up and annoy the enemy, destroy some squads, then finish them off with the big space dinos. In practice I outflanked the genestealers in two out of the three matches.

The carnifex brood was there to delete units and take fire. The trygon was there to take fire as well. I was concerned as hell that my tervigons would die quickly. Two out of my three opponents didn't really do that.

My first game I played against Grey Knights. It was auto-tie. He put his objective way on his right flank (mistake!) and I put mine centrally. I deployed first and stacked the left side with my carnifexes, trygon, a tervigon, and hive guard. I outflanked my two genestealer blobs. I put a tervigon and four hive guard holding my central objective.

My tervigon spawned 17 gants on the first turn and up the left flank we went. The trygon was there mostly to soak shots and provide cover. The carnifexes managed to delete off some terminators, but their librarian still killed two of them with a force sword through shadow in the warp =/ Gants with tervigon support = dead dreadknight.
Squad one smashes into the line

The trygon also killed a 260 point dreadknight. Dude had two of those. He had a strike squad? on the point and my first wave of 8 genestealers whittled them down really well despite assaulting into cover. When the 19 genestealer squad came on it was all over for those dudes. He managed to divert some walking terminators over but it was too late. He had no vehicles. He tried a late game assault on my objective with another strike squad, but I had gants backed by a tervigon and two hive guard there still. No go. I won 2-0.

Squad two smashes into the line
My second game was against Dustin, also a Fresh Coast 40k goon. He brought daemons - lots of variety. Bloodletters, flamers, fiends, horrors, other slaanesh blue things, a greater daemon of nurgle, and a soul grinder. This was a daemon lollercaust. He deep strike mishapped two squads (including the huge flamer squad, saved my ass). He also landed a 20 man bloodletter squad right next to my carnifex shooters of doom and they were deleted.



I had setup to give him very little room to deep strike in, and when I had gants spawned it was probably just unfair. I blew up his soul grinder on turn 2 with a lucky hive guard shot. He came in piecemeal and I destroyed every piece very quickly. Five genestealers killed 10 horrors in two turns, I think. I won 10-1.

My last game was against regular ole' space marines with Lysander. This was dawn of war with 4 objectives. He dropped Lysander in turn 1 in my area - I had reserved everything because it was Dawn of War and I wanted to outflank onto his flank placed objectives. I brought on my army in turn 1. Lysander was with a damn command squad so I wasn't able to delete them - damn FNP. I did manage to kill their speeder with hive guard. Being able to triumphantly bring out the FAQ and say you don't get cover saves from HG for all out made me feel pretty smug.

Lysander ran through a trygon. I fucked up by not assaulting him with my carnifex squad. I don't know why, I just screwed up. This cost me the battle as I had no troops left when he killed my tervigon next turn. I had to outflank my genestealers over to my objective just to hold two.

I had outflanked the blob squad onto his left flank where he put an objective. They had wasted a tac squad. He had no rhinos, and he was super concerned that the genestealer squad would just run through his entire army because he couldn't choose to retreat - stubborn from Lysander. Somehow I was stuck in combat and he moved his tac squads really really fast.

My other tervigon he killed on the left flank with devastator shots. I figured I had a cover save but he wouldn't give it to me. TLoS, meh. In the end it came down to my flank squad of genestealers repeatedly going to ground on his objective. I should have won, but I failed a LD 10 morale check in the last turn and they ran. So bitter.

My opponent and I went 2 wins and 1 tie in that last game. KPs meant the winner was 2-1. Overall I had a lot of fun and got some games in with my neglected Tyranids, placing the highest I've ever placed singly with my Tyranids at third place. With my winnings I bought eight more genestealers so next time I can do 20, 20, and 8 in my troops slots. It was nice seeing everyone out again.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the batrep! Love reading about the 'nids - and can only imagine the horror on your opponent's faces when you start rolling a 3x dakkafex round of fire. 36x TL S6? Yes please =) I actually really like the idea behind this list. If I were to play it I would tweak it a bit to add a broodlord to the small G squad, drop the big squad to 13 - but I'm a huge broodlord fan. I'd also make the trygon a prime. Then he can synapse the fexes and let the tervigons do more troopish things; might also be able to get cover from them. Not to mention +12 S5 shots for added deletion fun.

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  2. Yeah I definitely should have made him a trygon prime. I really like broodlords too, but this was an attempt at 'intimidation by numbers'. I think next time I'll drop the trygon and add another set of genestealers and put in some BL action.

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  3. Congrats Muggins! I am glad you picked the Great Devourer back up. You did well!

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  4. I beat up on Wayne for my first game... but everyone beat up on Wayne Saturday (he won the "smashface" award). The rest of the day way was pretty brutal; Daemon gods were having a goog chuckle at my expense. Good time though, good crowd, and two of my games were against FC40k members. I might've had a better chance if I didn't have to play those pros. :]

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