Tuesday 24 December 2013

DGG Battle Report Tyranids V Space Wolves


Time for another club battle report and with the new Tyranid army inbound I was looking forward to taking them out for a spin!

My list 
2 Tervigons  Iron Arm /leech   & Endurance / Hemhorage
Swarmlord  Leech / Iron arm / 
Flyrant
2* Zoanthropes (puppetmaster/ Endurance and 2 crap powers)
20 Gargoyles
Trygon
7 Ymgarls
10 gaunts
10 gaunts in pod

Space Wolf force was

2 Rune Priests one with Divination Prescience/foreboding and Jaws/ lightning
Drop pod with combi melta squad
2 10 man tac squads one in rhino
2 land speeder with multi - melta / flamer
Drop pod and 10 man tac
2 squads of long fangs
Dreadnought
3 thunderwolves



Mission was in the style of the BAO 2 missions played concurrently - with  Emperors Will and The Relic and setup of vanguard strikes .  I have played these variants a few times and I find it brings a little more balance to the game... you are never quite out of it!  Both of us place our emperors Will objectives in buildings (just left and right in the below photo.

Fig 1 - Tyranid setup

The Tyranids setup aggressively in the center using the spore forest for cover... they look hungry!


Fig 2 Wolves setup
The wolves counter putting their tac squads in the center (one in Rhino) the long fangs hold the right flank from cover (building / forest)
Turn 1 central advance
The Tyranid pour forward... psychic powers are a bit of a fail with 3 of my creatures wounding themselves!
On the plus side Puppetmaster does go off and manages to cause a landspeeder to meltagun the Dreadnought for first blood. The hive mind can cause you to do strange things.
On the right flank the wounded Flyrant  jumps forward and takes out  some long fangs. The Devourer worms cause the 2 remaining fangs to run back. ATSKNF will get them straight back into it.

Turn 1 Drop pod strike
The grey hunters and the rune priest drop deep and aggressively taking the iron arm tervigon out in one shot and the feedback kills half a dozen gaunts. A few of the Gargoyles get plinked by the tac squads - FNP and cover help them stay in the game.



SW turn 1 - bolters at the ready
Tyranid  counter charge
The Swarmlord does not take kindly to tinmen causing the ground to open under his buddies and charges in with help from the flock of Gargoyles. The swarmlord challenges and splatters the offending rune priest.



Tyranid turn 2 - Ymgarl strike
The Ymgarls appear in the right hand forest and jump both squads of the Long fangs - taking some casualties on the way in. The Thunderwolves lose one of their number from the Flyrant but prepare to counter charge.
In the center the Trygon assaults the troop unit holding the emperors will objective - slicing and dicing them without a wound.  The thunderwolves flub some of their attacks and the ymgarls are fortunate to survive.. help is on the way as in the wolves turn the central tac unit are wiped out and the Tyrgon moves close to the ongoing combat.



SW turn 3 Grab the Relic
Also in turn 3 the other drop pod arrives and the marines get out and grab the relic

In addition this turn a spawned gaunt squad are killed (and the remaining tervigon menopauses) by the disembarking second troop unit.

On the left flank it takes the swarmlord a while to take his boneswords out of the remains of the rune priest but he continues to work through the marines (who in turn kill some gargoyles)



Nid turn 4 - my what shiny teeth you have
In nid turn 4 the tervigon heads straight for the relic peering around the droppod which he then charges and wrecks.
Nid turn 4 - Ymgarls Trygon and flyrant kill them
The last ymgarl takes some marines out and the trygon comes in and mangles some more. The flyrant chooses to hit the remaining runepriest.... just surviving a force sword but eventually killing him.
The swarmlord and his buddies finish off the drop tac squad and turn back towards the objective the left and right flanks closing in like jaws onto the relic.
But the marines are not done yet and krak grenades  at the ready they charge the tervigon and over 2 turns they kill her with the wolfen going rend crazy too- she explodes and kills most of the gaunts nearby... for a moment things look better for the marines.

Cruuunch
The Zoanthropes just act to stop the marines on the objective running away - pinning them in combat while the other monsters close in. In a flurry of blood and claws the marine numbers are dramatically reduced. The future looks to contain gene soup...
SW turn 5 Final stand!
The final marine wolfen squares up to the Trygon...it ends predictably.... another annal written in the heroic history of the space wolves.




Saturday 24 August 2013

Tentacle time ... using the tentacle / pipe maker from forge planet

So myself and a friend bought the forge planet set of pipe / tentacle makers recently and I was dead keen to try it out.

I decided I would make a little "diorama" piece with my first tentacles to try it out. The result below is a Dark eldar warrior who is trying to fight his way clear of grasping tentacles.







I have to say I love this product. I am also excited about the conversion opportunities the rumoured "nid -vember" codex will bring. There may be many multi- tentacled monsters in my future !!

And updated with  painted version....

Sunday 31 March 2013

Death from above - Mycetic spore strategies

The Mycetic spore is an interesting option for tyranid players, after all the hive mind uses it in the early stages of the invasion to bring in support - but what can you use it for ?

With no model all sorts of conversions can be seen around the world. some cool some not so cool, most people also just think of the Mycetic spore as the delivery system for the Doom of Malantai and it certainly does a wonderful job of that but there are many more tricks in the Mycetic spores arsenal.

First of some key facts
At 40 points the mycetic spore pod (or Spod) is by far the cheapest monstrous creature in the army, can smash and is AP3 in combat
It deepstrikes accurately
Is immobile when it lands
Is non-scoring but can contest
Is brought as a transport for various units.
Is armed with tentacles - 6 S6 BS 5  & can be upgraded with various weapons
Lash whips

Onto the tactics...
Deepstriking
First and foremost the Spod is great at delivering units exactly where you need them. Combined with hive commander on a tyrant or the swarmlord you can all but guarantee arrival on cue in turn 2. Perfect positioning is easily attainable with a 6" disembark which is less than the typical scatter of the pod.
This is further simplified in that the scatter distance of a spod will be reduced if it is to land on an enemy unit- clever positioning almost guarantees you an on target or very close to target deployment.

The ideal units for such a delivery are:
The Doom ...  well he is awesome isn't he :)
Zoanthropes... great for positioning S10 lances, psychic shrieks or just plain old synapse
Devilgaunts... so if you want LOTS of s4 shooting this is the option for you.



So What Else?
Being close to or even on objectives is a good place for Spods to drop. This can give the pod an additional boost (if playing with mysterious objectives  but also denies the enemy that objective and forces them to deal with the pod. Similarly keep an eye out for great spots to drop in the enemy deployment zone. Spods can be a great way of getting linebreaker- especially if there is a big LOS blocker in the way - or a hill crest (3+ cover remember). Always try to drop in cover, with only T4, missile launchers make short work of Spods and the ubiquitous Aegis gun lines are a particular problem.


Shooting
Tyranids have A) little High Strength Shooting and B) few ways to get around the back of an enemy.

even at BS 2 6 S6 shots are useful for either tank hunting or troop hunting. The versatility itself is useful but you can further tailor the unit.

AT duty
the TL Deathspitter is the best option here. at S5 it meshes well with the s6. Decent at stripping hull points.  It also gives the pod a little more of a reach. Similarly the Stinger salvo is another option here. 5S5 shots is good and is particularly useful if plan on pairing the pod with a preferred enemy bubble from a hive tyrant, possibly enough to push it past the TL deathspitter. Either way 2 S6 + 2 S5 hits  is not to be sneezed at if you have rear Armour angles against AV 10 that will get close to averaging a  pen.

AP duty
Lots of options here. Large blasts are useful here. The barbed strangler is a little overcosted as you will rarely use it's range. So I believe the cluster spine option is slightly better, again slightly extending the range.


Dirty Tricks
Bait - this is particularly effective if you are on an objective but distract the opposition and get them to reroute charges. Pulling them back to their own baseline or pulling them forward into a counter charge range is the way to go here. Also particularly useful if the pods regular contents are employed elsewhere. Opponents also often forget about lash whips

Movement blocking - Pods are pretty big. most players play them as , marine pod size or similar. Forcing units to go around them, slowing them down. Or if the opportunity presents itself shutting off an escape route or trapping models (useful with marines in particular).  You can also  place the pod immediately in front of your opponents vehicles. Land raiders or similar heavier vehicles are good targets for this. You can dramatically slow down a big vehicles movement or encourage a ram. Raming a monster is risky business. Remember that the pod also has armourbane & smash. That is a single auto hitting S10 AP2 strike. Often underestimated by opponents... likelihood of a pen with a smash? on AV14 55%, on AV13 75% on AV 12 85%.  Feel like taking the chance with your land raider or Rhino now?

Sniping - Because the pod is pretty accurate when it deepstrikes you can use its weapons to try and snipe out characters or key models. the min 6" range helps here as only models within range can be removed. Get rid of that pesky powerfist  hanging out at the back :)

that's it folks.
If you have any other thoughts on the mycetic spore to share let me know and I'll add to the above.


Monday 18 February 2013

Global Biobombing : Dundracon Tournament report

I spent today at Dundracon, playing a 1 day tournament. This was my first completed tournament of 6th ed - Finally!  So how did the Tyranid Biobomb do?

Well first up this was a 1500 point tournament, with no allies and no fortifications, I trimmed back my 1850 list into the following:
2 dakka Hive Tyrants with wings - 1 with Hive Commander and one with Preferred Enemy.
2, 3 power, Tervigons
2 10 man Gaunts
2 * 2 Zoanthropes (1 squad in a Spod)
Doom of Malantai in SPod

First name out of the hat for a table,  an auspicious start? . I drew Adam, a gent from San Jose and his Space marines: Chapter Master, banner, honour guard in a Land Raider. 3*10 Tac squads in Rhinos and 2*5 man dev squads.

Mission was DOW with Primary 4 objectives and secondary First Blood, Linebreaker, Slay warlord. I was going second and nightfight came up thankfully!

Powers wise I stuck mainly with biomancy powers the stand out powers rolled were Endurance on both Flyrants, Iron arm, puppetmaster & Telekine dome on 1 Tervigon (the other one got Enfeeble and 2 crap powers). The doom took psychic shriek.


I  picked sides and set up second with my Flyrants on the board hidden  and the pods waiting to arrive. A guant squad outflanked with Hive Commander. And I was very pleased to find that the game was nightfight for first turn.

Adam's shooting was ineffectual due to stealth from nightfighting but he did chose to barrel his land raider forward 18" right into my face. In my turn turn he was met with a counter charge from an angry looking Tervigon who hit 3 times but just took one hull point. My hive tyrants flew forward in formation vector striking a Rhino  for 2 hull points on the way and then focused their fire on obliterating a dev squad for first blood.

Turn 2
Adam had realised that the flyrants needed to be dealt with or they would cause havoc in his backfield so he shot at them heavily - almost everything missed or was saved though through some jammy dice from me.
Unfortunately the hive tyrants were just pissed off by that and they killed a Rhino and a few marines to boot.
Highlight of this turn was puppetmastering the Crusader to shoot at the honour guard mincing a couple of them but the doom also was his usual masterful self, striping out the other dev squad and 2 of the honor guard. Awesome turn all round for me.

Turn 3
This is quickly turning into a rout unfortunately for Adam, his dice are deserting him completely at this stage. He seems incapable of rolling 6's except on the dooms tests ! (the doom is max wounds now and is still eating). To add to this the tervigon's are getting in on the act too and spawning furiously!
Also in this turn the Zoanthropes (who had kept book powers) show up and blow big holes in the land Raider leaving it a smouldering wreck. The rest of the army trash the remaining Rhinos. The Flyrant nabs one of the squads in combat. Adam cleverly uses ATSKNF and auto fails to ensure they have a chance to escape, rally and shoot the flyrant but it doesn't work.

Turn 4 Adam tries the ATSKNF trick again but is caught and down to 2 models. The other marines are  bravely holding the line against a wave of gaunts backed up by multiple angry monsters... Adam doffs his cap at that and wishes me the very best of luck in the rest of the tournament.
final result was 4 objectives + 3 secondaries so 15-0 VPs

====Round 2=====
Dan from the Team Zero Comp crew had been very much hoping to avoid a his hated nid match up - hoping his buddy Grant & his bike council would be taking the bullet for him. No luck though! On the plus side we were playing on a super forested table with a big river down the middle, With my bugs being brown and his biker army being green it really did look cinematic.
Dan had 28 bikes including a librararian and a chapter master. The bikers themselves were pretty well kitted out with Melta,plasma  and combi plasma(very cleverly magnetised to the back of the bike). He also had bought a storm talon for some anti air duty.
Dan also has done a fantastic job painting these guys - he was one of my picks for best painted. His Librarian is below.


Primary Mission was Killpoints with Vanguard setup though so at least there was some hope right?
Dan wins side and I win first turn.

Knowing the bikes would be reliant on cover saves against the Doom (who is a huge problem for this army) I gave him, both sets of zoans and a tyrant psychic shriek. Both Tervigons picked up Iron Arm and a Tyrant and a tervigon got endurance.

The setup looked like this.

First turn I spawn gaunts and press up hard to cut of easy vectors of escape for the bikes. Both Flyrants take to the sky and hit the middle squad with Psychic Shriek and lots of Dakka. Good wounding but equally good saving and the sole remaining bike legs it. The bike army then turns to the Lead flyrant and throws everything at him, hitting and wounding a few times but the flyrant weathers the storm and  flaps away (I make all 3 fall to ground tests).
Turn 2
As Dan fears... the Doom arrives on que and is in range of 3 units who all lose some models. The librarian at least stops psychic shriek this time. The Psychic choir of zoanthropes also step up and take out the left most squad of bar 1. one tyrant decides to drop right in front of the Librarian and shoots him. The squad take look out sir wounds for the librarian. and go down to 4 members. the other tyrant kill all but one bike in the rearmost bike unit (top right in above picture behind the librarian/captains squad). The librarian had cast endurance which meant the tyrant felt ok about charging him I didn't challenge but I did kill the remaining 2 regular bikers. The Captain makes his saves.

Turn 3 the line continues to press up and space is getting very tight for the remaining bikers who are retreating to the corner. The Hive commander tyrant kills the final members of one squad with his brainleech worms. The other tyrant smashes and hits the captain 3 times.. but he shrugs off the attacks with his shield. The librarian fails to hit with his force axe.   In Dan's turn the storm talon arrives and tries to snipe the doom but it escapes unharmed. He does however get first blood by killing a spore pod.
The Tyrant has another go at smashing the Captain, this time killing him with the first blow... the second deals with the librarian before he can swing his force weapon.

At this point Dan -who still hates the Doom - only has about 6 bikes (mostly lonely individuals) and a stormtalon remaining all of whom will be grabbed by gaunts / flyrants so we decide that a trip to the bar might be a more fun way to finish out the game. The beer was indeed delicious and the banter was great!

Final score
Tyranids 10 (warlord 1, linebreaker 1, 8 kp 8)
Marines 2 (first blood 1, 1KP 1)


=======Round 3========
Final round of the tournament and I was to play Keith and his Necrons, another one of the players who I considered for best painted with his lovely ceramic and blue necrons

His list was 2 Doomsday Arks, 30 warriors with a Lance cryptek each, Zahndrekh, a kitted out destroyer lord, 2*3 destroyers and 7 flayed ones.

Primary mission was 1 objective each for 3 points each, secondary was Slay the warlord, Line breaker and first blood (1 point each) and table quarter 2 points each.

I won first turn and table side, no night fight though but then Keith had a solar pulse so it didn't matter anyway.
Key powers this game were Endurance on the Hive commander, Drop zoans keep lance,  Both Tervigons get Iron Arm again . the other Zoan squad pick up Iron arm and puppet master.
I set up on the right flank with both primary objectives targetted and Keith sets up in a block built around the doomsday arks.

Turn 1
Keith Fails to seize so both flyrants jump forward for first blood.  I make a mistake and put the hive commander out front and the preferred enemy tyrant further back but 2 good volleys kill off the targeted squad of warriors - or at least so I thought... the Cryptek rolls a six and gets back up denying me first blood.
To start Keiths turn the same cryptek shoots, hits and wounds the hive commander who promptly crashes to earth with the shock and takes a second wound. Now standing in front of the entire gun line he unsurprisingly dies... giving up both First blood and Slay the warlord. Another Cryptek decides if his brother can do it he should try it also and rolls another 6 and although failing to wound him my second flyrant also crashes to the ground losing a wound. He loses 2 more wounds from remaining destroyer fire. I was somewhere between aghast and astounded at this point!!
The destroyer lord then charges the tyrant and pulls out his mindshackles ... I roll my 3 dice but am lucky enough to pass - just- the Tyrant then decides he has had enough of this upstart destroyer lord and splatters it with the help of preferred enemy. That at least puts some balance  back in the fight.

Turn 2 Apparently shocked by the Hive commanders death my reserves roll three 1's - damn it there was a 5 / 6 unit doom impacting landing spot available!!  Iron Arm goes off well on both.

My Zoans line up a puppetmaster strike on the nearest doomsday ark... which is pointed straight at a nice blob of warriors and Zahndrekh. But never fear I roll a 12 and take a wound!
Tervigon 1 spawns out 7. Tervigon 2  I forget to spawn with... he does however make a charge to the flayed ones and kills a couple.
The flyrant vector strikes and kills a destroyer but his follow up shooting (life leech rolls double ones twice Grr) is a wasted effort.

With no endurance and only 1 wound he is a soft target and a squad of warriors shoot him out of the sky  in Keiths turn.The Doomsday arks take a few wounds from the tervigon who isn't in combat and kill some gaunts. Zahndreks squad decide the idea of doomsday arks shooting them is a bad idea so kill the puppetmaster zoanthrope. The Tervigon in combat kills another pair of Flayed ones (3 left). The destroyers move up to try and put the hurt on tervigon 1 but Iron arm stymies them and I take just one wound (3 left)
Score is still 5- 0 and not only that but if this was boxing Keith would have a big lead on points!

Turn 3 The Doom & Gaunts stubbornly decide to stay off the board but the Zoanthropes do turn up and drop in front of the doomsday arks. They do hit it once but roll a 1 to pen with the lance... Gah again!!
Tervigon 1 spawns out on an 8 and tervigon 2 spawns 14 but is still going. The other gaunts shuffle around to give tervigon 1 a charge on the destroyers.
I now put a complex charge pattern in play and 3 squads of gaunts follow the tervigon into combat. Squads 1 and 2 multi charge the destroyers. The 14 man squad also charge the destroyers but also assaults Zahndrekhs unit and the flayed ones. I lose my assault bonus but  I am pretty pleased with myself here as this is a really awesome multi charge! The plan works perfectly as gaunts 1 and 2 +tervigon 1 kill the destroyers, tervigon 2 and gaunt 3 kill the flayed ones and the remainder of gaunt 3 kill 2 or 3 warriors. I lose a couple of models but Zahndrekh fails his leadership and gets run down by the gaunts... who swarm around his twitching corpse spitting acid to stop him getting back up. the cryptek escapes their attention however
In one fell swoop I have taken out the heart of the necron army... Shooting in 6th ed is strong but still nothing rips an army apart like a great charge.

Keith is on the ropes now but he is not dead yet.... his doomsday arks take another wound off of tervigon 1 (down to 2 now) and the last warrior squad take another wound... the cryptek from Zahndrekhs squad takes advantage and charges into the Tervigon and avoids all the blows thrown at it.
Score now 5-4 to the necrons

Turn 4 The doom arrives and does very little... just about managing to kill the tyrant killing cryptek from turn 1 with Shriek. The gaunts also arrive and hide in a corner for the quarters.
The Zoans try and lance the nearest ark again and roll a 1 to pen yet again.
 Tervigon 1 kills the cryptek and shuffles forward. tervigon 2 ploughs onto the necrons home objective, spawning gaunts as he goes.

Keith focuses his fire on tervigon 1 who succombs, inspite great cover saving, to the inevitable. The ensuing gaunt feedback is not too bad with only 6  of a possible 20 or so gaunts dying. Importanly 1 gaunt is by himself on my objective. Keith also kills the Zoans 4 wounds 4 failed saves (epic fail by them in game 3 for sure). He cleverly moves the warriors away from the zoans and towards the top left table quarter.

Score now  4 - 7 due to a solo gaunt sitting on my objective.

Turn 5. Tervigon 2 annoyed at the loss of her brood sister charges and smashes the Closest ark asunder while spawning more gaunts (10) to hold the necron home objective.  Gaunts move into 7 inches of the warrior squad. Other gaunts move back to add their bodies to holding the tyranid home  objective while  the solo gaunt makes a run into the lower left table quadrant. The doom also moves up to  beside the last remaining warrior squad ( who are about midfield and holding a quarter) Keith rolls an 18 - ouch and loses a few models, and also loses a few from shriek and shooting from the Gaunts. the Gaunts and the Doom take another 1 down.

Keith has 4 models left including an Ark and as time is nearly up decides to call the game.

Final score:
Tyranids 12 (warlord 1, linebreaker 1, 2* primary objectives 6 and 2*tertiary 4)
Necrons 2 (warlord 1, First blood 1)


============================
All done bar the counting and it turned out that myself and Grant from the zero comp crew had both gone 3-0 so it came down to VP's, I won 37 to 30 I think. I picked up a fantastic box of terrain (awesome prize) which I hope to bring home. Delighted to finish and win my first 6th ed tournament and especially to do it with Tyranids!

So that was it - Thanks to Dan Benavidez the event TO  for a great day out and thanks to my 3 super opponents for making it a really fun event.

I'll leave you with a few interesting photos (apologies to the player who won best painted as I took photos but they were so poor I deleted them)
















Sunday 2 December 2012

The biobomb mutates

Recent games have proven to be very interesting, I got my first proper tournament (well half a tournament as I couldn't play day 2)
I found myself doing something unexpected, at the start of each game I found myself rolling on tables other than Biomancy, or at the very least rolling on tables as well  as Biomancy. so why did I make these decisions?
I realised as soon as I started to play competitively that one of the greatest advantages the powers tables have is that you gain huge flexibility. This only works of course if you have lots of powers - which the tyranids excel at - as you take a lot of the randomness out of the selections.

So what did I learn from each of these games?

First up Biomancy is still the core of your resilience and will usually be the place you need to start , a few Iron Arms or Endurances make a huge difference to the survivability of the list so if you roll either of those 2 early on your multi power monsters, Tervigons or Tyrants.  Once you have a power like that in place you can start to consider the other 2 tables - and your enemy. Let me explain by elaborating on my opponents and the choices I made accordingly.

Game 1 - Greydar
I played against a greydar list, a wraithguard blob led by eldrad, fuegan and the baron. The force was light on troops (2 min bikes and a squad of 7 hellions) so killing them was going to be the key to victory, as killing the 1000 point wraithguard unit wasn't going to happen. The other big problem I had hear was that of course Eldrad would put a severe dent in my powers. Now that is a pretty big challenge to deal with.
Knowing this I had to double down on Biomancy in most cases to give my tervigons a chance to cause a problem.
So what I did was give all of the 5 Zoanthropes ( 1 in  pods 1 not) the Primaris power Psychic Shriek as it denies cover and armour. I made a mistake of not giving it to the Doom.This was to make it almost impossible for the hellions or bikes to survive while the Tervigons & Flyrants distracted and damaged the blob and pumped out scoring units.
The 3 man zoans dropped in during the game, killing the hellions, with no cover save they were a soft target, it was even the first shot that saw them off, The dooms power killed a squad of bikes on the 3rd attempt - psychic shriek would have been much easier!

If I had been more ballsy in this game I could have loaded the Tyrants with shriek as well and just gone hunting.... even the wraithguard wouldn't have liked that much.
I won the game on the back of the powers I had chosen but it would have been much easier if I had chosen correctly

Game 2 - Necron
A Necron list - 3 night scythes, 1 doom scythe , 2 *6 wraith units with a lord, tomb blades, triarch stalker and 2 annihilation barges. The mission is the relic.
Clearly in this match up I am heavily outgunned.  Learning from the first mission I thought hard about
what powers I needed. So on with the rolling. I did roll pretty well on my first or second roll on my tervigons (1 endurance and 2 Iron arms) - and yes I rolled each psyker fully before moving on. This allowed me to take a close look at Telekinesis and Telepathy.
Telepathy was ideal as 2 of the powers are warp charge 2, meaning the first 4 are quite likely to be rolled.
Dominate -  good for slowing down wraiths
Mental fortitude - useless
Puppet master - ideal... more on why later!
terrify - scare the wraiths

I ended up with 2 puppet masters which is what I wanted.
The zoanthropes and tyrants went for biomancy or kept their existing powers : I got 2 Enfeebles

The powers in this game were used in the following way.
Turn 1 and 2 enfeeble was used to drop the toughness of the wraiths to T3 or T2, the T3 guys were picked on by the flyrants- S6 instant killing them really puts the pain on wraiths. Most of them died early. The T2 guys were pummeled by fire from spawned guants with fleshborers.
Turn 2 my tervigon cast puppetmaster on the Triarch stalker - who turned around and killed an annihilation barge (how fun is that!). Later on I even managed to roll a hit on a doomscythe, which promptly shot down another nightscythe (even more awesome).

Game 3 - Space wolves 
The final game was against space wolves. No shakey stick libraro-wolves and lots and lots of long fangs and grey hunters.
Again in this game Psychic shriek was key, as well as the Doom of Malantai. Dropping in and stripping models from units, Marine units with ld 8 and 9 do not like psychic shriek at all. It gets very easy for the zoans to A get their points back and B cause hastle in the backfield.


In Summary
The flexibility of psychic powers in targeting opponents weaknesses or covering your own is somewhat unprecedented in the game, imagine what you could do if you could change wargear by opponent?
I still see psychic powers as one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal... right up their with flyers, but while folks are tailoring to kill flyers they don't seem to be paying the same attention to psykers.

Good for the Biobomb!




Tuesday 13 November 2012

Picking Warlord traits for Tyranids

My current list has a Flyrant that usually takes the warlord spot.

The Flyrant is kitted out with Devourers and
So what is the best set of traits to give him - my estimations are as follows
Ratings for each are out of 5, 5 = awesome, 0 is completely useless

Command  
Inspiring Presence                          Fearless everywhere  0
Intimidating Presence                     Nice but only a few units it makes a big difference with  3
The Dust of a thousand worlds       Meh  most nids have it anyway   1
Master of the vanguard                  Can be handy especially for big bugs   3
Target Priority                               Old advisary is better but better range here   2
Coordinated assault                       Speeds up assaults a little    3


Personal Traits
Master of Defence                   Flyrants rarely stay in own deployment zone.     - 1
Master of Offence                   Flyants do occasionally charge things    -2
Master of Manoeuvre              Don't really need this but keep em guessing   - 2
Legendary Fighter                   Awesome.. challenge the weakling get a VP, can win games    -5
Tenacity                                  Useful  but requires careful movement   -4
Immovable object                   Awesome .. who doesn't like a scoring boss!   -5

Strategic Traits
Conqueror of cities                 A little table dependant but very good if right table - 3 or 5
Night Attacker                       Nids love to close in while it is dark   - 5
Master of Ambush                 Outflank for assault units is pretty poor now   -  2
Strategic Genius                     Re-rolling reserves is good for holding gaunts back or bringing on flyers- 4
Divide to conquer                  Very good for Nids if opponent is dependant on reserved firepower  - 3
Princeps of Deceipt               Meh  deployment zone limitation makes this weak   - 1

Overall 
Command   12
Strategic traits  19
Personal traits 18 or 20

So that helps a little command is not worth taking...In most situations  I would pick personal as it has a better upside but if the table was heavy ruins then I would be tempted to roll strategic as that slightly weights things in your favour!

Roll well Folks