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So after a delay due to travel, I was finally able to make it back into the gaming store (battle reports should be more regular for the forseeable future). I joined in the new 1850 pt. league - the first time that I've played at this points level. To view my batrep registry, click here

THE CHALLENGER: Termagaaaaaaaaaaaunts!
1850 pts.

2x Tervagon
3 groups of 3x zoanthropes
2x big mob of termagaunts
2x tyrannofexes
Harpy

(he didn't have a printed army list, so I don't know what had which upgrades)

THE DEFENDER: Brown and white, take the fight.
1850 pts.

I used list 5-1850-a

Basically, it's the same as my 1500 except that you add al'rahem and a second power blob upgrade.

The deployment was pitched battle. The mission was a special league mission called "spirit shards", which was a modified version of kill points. Both players started out with 18 spirit shards that they had to distribute amongst their units (every unit must have had at least 1). When you kill that unit, the unit which killed the enemy unit claims that dead unit's spirit shards. For example, units A, B, and C, all have 1 shard apiece. Unit A wipes out unit B, giving unit A 2 shards, and unit C 1. Unit C then kills unit A, leaving unit C with 3 shards.

My opponent won the roll and elected to go second. At deployment, the field looked like this:



So, I didn't really have a strategy for this. My guess was to approach it like kill points. The difference was that I would throw a few cheaper units up front so that units that charged my popcorn would then get nailed by the rest of my army, thus taking advantage of the fact that shards pool. In my case, I have so many units that everyone basically got 1, while he had a lot of overlap, meaning that all his zoanthropes and monstrous creatures had 2.

TURN 1

Report concerning the action on: 3 Ouros
Daxos Line

As is my usual custom, I began the day of the 3rd with study of the classics, followed by my morning constitutional. The sun alighted on our position most gaily and the spirit of the troops was high. I took my time that morning in survey of our greater position. The ground our brave men occupied had shown signs of much combat in the past. Ruins of an imperial fort, and of some sort of eldar sorcery could be found, now greatly overgrown by a variety of local florae. Much of the aforementioned suffered from charring (with many trees stripped of foliage), indicating that more recent action had occurred in the area. After sparing a few moments to take some sketches for the naturalist society back home, I rejoined my troops.

As the early afternoon came upon us, the sky began to overcast. It was at this time that I was made informed of the nature, most dire, of our position. It appeared that the rascal of a tyranid force had surrounded much of our positions, and that my line was personally dedicated to hold one of the flanks against any probing actions. As reinforcements would not be in coming, force conservation was of the utmost importance.

It was not long before one such probing attack came straight at my personal group. I aroused my men with short blasts of whistle: the sprightly tones alerting the eager boys into position, licking for a fight.

The game begins with me consolidating my position in slightly to the left. I had spread my troops out with the intention of getting him to spread his forces out. As this had succeeded (perhaps not a good thing), it was time to hide my leftmost squad behind a wall.

Shooting began with my basilisk near-missing his zoanthropes on the left. The one shot pattered off an invul save. My left manticore got two shots off, but also scattered, managing to down a couple of termagaunts. The manticore on the right got one shot off, and also scattered off the right side zoanthropes taking a few termagaunts with it. The mortars likewise put forth a lackluster performance.

After this point, the field looked like this:



His turn begins with a massed charge of everything but the tervagons. Both tervagons put out 11 gaunts apiece.

The thing with these new termagaunts is that they don't have spirit shards when they come out, making them still highly dangerous, but without the benefit of me getting points for killing them.

My opponent's shooting is likewise pretty lackluster, and the wise use of "incoming!" prevented a few casualties.

After this point, the field looked like this:




TURN 2

Now that it had become obvious to me that the enemy was most committed to it's attack on my position, I turned to my astropath and called for reinforcements. With great strain, he began his radiophonic psychotelecommunication. We all got quite the start when he gurgled up blood which effused from him quite gingerly, such as sparkling wine, recklessly shaken, and then uncorked.

His powers, however were to the utmost of effect. Not longer had I called my reinforcements in than they arrived in a most ingenious of outflanking maneuvers.



Meanwhile, upon not only the arrival of their comrades, but upon the further polite fire of my artillery, the men could not help but give a great cheer. The forces of Folera on the march! O to be alive!

I roll for reserves for my 1st squad with Al Rahem. The number is too low. Then the astropath bumps it up by 1, and magically they're ready after all. I roll for what side they arrive on and, disastrously, they come in from the left. Then the astropath worked his magic, and suddenly I was able to choose which side to bring them in on. This guy rules!

Shooting began with my outflanking horde. My plasma guns unload on his tervigon and, unfortunately, loses 2 to burns while doing no wounds to the MC. The meltagun SWS is at least able to ping it. At this point, I learn that they have SIX wounds! Meanwhile, the flanking blob's flamer does some very, very unkind things to his termagaunts, and he even loses a couple to pistol fire.

Meanwhile, my artillery opens up again. I start with a very dangerously close basilisk shot on his termagaunts just further away from my newly-arrived blob squad. I place the blast as far away from my men as is possible. The shot scatters... directly towards my troops... 8"... Thankfully, I had placed the blast marker far, far away and so I didn't actually hit any of my own troops. Unfortunately for my opponent, this meant the blast covered two zoanthropes and a lot of termagaunts. Both zoanthropes fail their invul saves, and his tervagon termagaunts are basically wiped out. On the other side of the board, my manticores pump 5 shots out onto the left side of the board. Several hits on the zoanthropes, and several more hits on termagaunts. The zoanthropes pass a few of their invul saves, but with 4 or 5 S10 hits on them, a couple fall, including a bag of termagaunts. Even my mortars are effective, scoring hits on termagaunts across the field.

Then comes assault. While Al Rahem was out of range of the remaining zoanthrope, my giant power blob crashes into his gaunts:



He succeeds with his countercharge test, and his I4 baddies rip into my men, causing some casualties (I made a lot of armor saves, though). Then came my 12 rerollable power weapon attacks all of which, after the rerolls, hit. Throwing on the rest of my attacks, I tore through the squad like kleenex in a snot party.

I was greatly pleased to hear that the flanking maneuver had performed exemplary. Surely this shows how men of valor and men of superior station in life are able to synergize to the effect of victory on the field. After their most vigorous charge, my forces continued on, unabated, storming up the field, eager to get their hands on even more of the enemy. Men of such zeal and lust for glorious combat, I dare say, have never before been seen on the field of battle.



Now that there's enough blood... ichor? on my hands, the turn ends.

After this point, the field looked like this:



In his turn, his big and scary continues to approach. His left-side tervagon spits out 10 more gaunts, while his right side one spits out 15, but rolls doubles for the shutdown.

In shooting, his several scary dakka-ful bugs are now in range. Inferno cannons and thunderfire cannons (or, well, their equivalent) start finding targets, and I start taking my first real casualties of the game.

Meanwhile, his suddenly-15-termagaunts unload with their stormbolters on my exposed power blob. After a great deal of carnage, they charge in.



Thankfully, he does a pretty crappy job with his attacks, and I do pretty well with my saves. 11 power weapon attacks, in turn, turn several gaunts into gore, tying the combat.

After this point, the field looked like this:




TURN 3

I had been slightly scooting my dudes backwards to make sure that I wasn't on the recieving end of a tyranid charge, but now that his forces were upon me, I basically had two choices. Either I could continue to coil the spring, or I could lunge out and attack. Coiling would caused me to become even more clustered in the face of template and blast weapons of both sizes, while attacking would leave me just as vulnerable and would pool spirit shards right in front of him.

As Frederick the Great said "In all things, audacity".

In shooting, I managed to fail both "bring it downs" on all of my meltaguns that I brought up to kill his harpy (the 8 shots did manage to take a couple wounds off regardless). Likewise, I think my orders failed everywhere else. I guess my officers were just too excited to speak clearly. My manticores got off two shots apiece on the zoanthrope on the left. While I got a lot of hits, he unfortunately passed all 3 invul saves. At least one of the blasts cleared off some termagaunts, helped with the surviving mortar squad.

The hot swirl of the melee was upon us. I made the bold decision to set loose my dogs of war like canine on so many scraps of meat and bone discarded from the dinner table. With a sharp blast of my whistle, my troops advanced keenly into the fray. A general assault!





So yeah, I went for broke and basically charged everything that could charge. On the left, my power blob took down 2 termagaunts, with the third failing his fearless check and getting run over. The power blob also got all of its rerollable power weapon attacks on the now-2-wound harpy, who was killed twice over by a flurry of angry blows.

On the right, my squad that had flamered his first free termagaunt squad charged in and easily dispatched the few remainders, even without a power weapon. Meanwhile the fight between power blob #1 and right side free termagaunt squad #2 continued. Without the benefit of the charge, his termagaunt's effectiveness dropped greatly. My power weapons, however, were just as effective as before. This time, he lost a few models to fearless over run.

Finally, there was Al Rahem, charging in with his super monstrous creature killer weapon. Unfortunately, his whole squad flubbed all of their attacks. His Zoanthrope managed to kill one. I lost combat, and failed my morale check. His zoanthrope caught the whole squad in a sweeping advance...

After this point, the field looked like this:



In his turn, he consolidates his forces, and moves up to enact angry, angry vengeance on power blob #2. His left Tervagon pops out 12 more termagaunts, which are able to get into range against the blob. This... is going to hurt...

In shooting, he unloads on my power blob in the center with 4 zoanthropes, a tyrranofex and something like two dozen termagaunt twin linked storm bolters. Thankfully, I had made sure to spread my troops out as much as my crappy consolidation would allow. Flamer hits and small blasts took casualties from the front, leaving some termagaunts out of range. A couple of rosarius saves and gallons of blood later, the center blob was reduced to just the priest and the commissar.

Meanwhile, his zoanthrope did some unkind things to one of my meltagun squads, and his tyrranofex killed all but one dude in my right hand squad (he broke and ran, not showed in the upcoming picture). Despite all the carnage, my commissar keeps his cool, and his priest is allowed to miss out on summary execution for now...

On the bright side, my other power blob killed even more termagaunts, with even more going down to fearlesness. Unfortunately, he's still left with one model, so I'm not able to charge next turn.




TURN 4

I could not but stand in awe of the incredible forbearance shown by my soldiers. Such a sight nearly brought me to weep with pride. After a horrific encounter with enemy forces, they wavered not a bit, but were able to withdraw in proper order.

Having thus proven ourselves on the field of battle, I saw it fit to disengage. The order to conserve forces impressed upon me the need for an orderly withdraw. If only I would have had the chance to attack one of the monstrosities personally, no doubt would I have been able to dispatch it with great ease. Unfortunately, the demands of the mission must come before any attempt to prove personal valor. With great ingenuity, I called for other forces of my line to set up an ambush behind our position to clear away the remaining forces that had been blunted by our smart advance. More effusions from the astropath ensued.

At this point, I'm ahead 21-15 with spirit shards, and he's getting close with his high strength, high wounds baddies followed by an unstoppable respawning mass of infantry. I figure that now would be a good time to hide and consolidate.

I move everything that I can behind cover, which is reinforced with successful "go go go" orders all around.

In shooting, my manticores put on a brilliant display with their last volley, getting in 6 shots, with both of the leading shots as "hits". Taking 4 more invul saves, his left side zoanthrope FINALLY fails an invul save, giving the manticore on the right 3 spirit shards. Some termagaunts are also taken down in the mix, aided by more mortar fire.

On the right, I finally finish off his last termagaunt and get into position for my right side power blob to attack his tervagon, or something.

After this point, the field looked like this:



In response, he continues to charge forward into the gap, getting lots of scary stuff really close. His tervagon on the left spits out 8 more termagaunts.

Thankfully, my skilled running-and-hiding helps minimize the damage he causes with his blob. Once he takes down the officer squad on the left, nothing has LOS to my 5 spirit shards hanging out on just 3 models behind the left hand wall. Meanwhile, assorted shooting does more damage to my infantry.

With his remaining shot, he lined up his zoanthrope against my right-side manticore. He passed his psychic test (indeed, he had made about a half dozen psychic tests per turn, passing all without suffering perils) and just BARELY was within 12" to shoot it's lance against my manticore. After a high roll for armor penetration, and me failing my cover save, he blew up the vehicle, transferring 3 spirit shards to his right side zoantrhope, giving it a total of 6!

After this point, the field looked like this:



At the top of turn 5, I rolled to continue and threw down a big, fat, snake eye.


FINAL RESULTS

We carefully went back over our surviving units and both found that we wound up with exactly as many shards as we'd started with, 18-18, for a draw.

- I'm actually pretty satisfied with my performance this game. My opponent brought a really well-put together list (much kudos), and given my usual handling of tyranid opponents can be described as dismal at best (and dismaler at worst). The fact that I was able to manage a draw, much less be ahead for much of the game is greatly enheartening to me (indeed, if any one of a few key die rolls had gone differently, I could have won with a healthy margin). If I can handle what is generally a tough army for me (and my army in general) to fight on a close relative of a mission type that my army is bad at gives me high hopes for doing well in this tournament over all.

- Tervagons are MEAN! 300 points for two T6 W6 is a pain and a half to kill, especially with their unending infantry screen. Furthermore, he threw out 67 termagaunts for free that game, and it only went to turn 4! Furthermore, termagaunts themselves are mean. They're guardsmen that exchange 1 point of armor in order to get 1 point of initiative, counter-attack, and a twin-linked storm bolter as their small arms. Best troops in the game, as far as I can tell, all the more so when you get free squads that pop out and can then move, shoot, and assault. I can definitely see this as being a liability in kill point games, but I can't imagine facing off against that on a capture and control mission. In this game, shooting out more spirit shard takers that didn't come with spirit shards of their own, this was probably the best unit in the game. I dare say that tervagons are as mean as my manticores.

Whatever complaints that are levied against the new tyranid codex, at least you guys do have a couple of good, viable units (zoanthropes also included). Respect the bug.

- Likewise, my astropath-al rahem combo was superb. Given that my astropath worked properly on both abilities so early on makes it possibly the best 30 point upgrade I've ever fielded. I probably could have handled the exact positioning of things a bit better, but being able to arrive en-masse was neato, even if al rahem himself so painfully screwed up.

- This was also my first real test with power blobs, and I've got to say, I like what I see. I admittedly had some good rolling this game, but it's killing power and survivability both really make the squad worth its 250 point price tag. I will look forward to using these guys more in the future.

MVP: The power blobs. These guys combined carried nearly half of my spirit shards. They were able to take them, and then keep them. I didn't even need to make use of my stubborn USR.

Hero of the game: I'm going to have to go with my left side power blob in specific. They courageously multicharged a carnifex and purposely and meaningfully withdrew in good order with dignity, rather than the commissar blowing holes into the priest and then running away, like last game.

In conclusion, my forces fought nobly on the field of battle despite many pains suffered. The enemy was fought down by more of my sober, gallant troops in rear guard, who took to their job most attentively and with great efficiency of arms. I ordered my men to receive twice their daily ration of spirits, as proper behavior should be politely rewarded. Morale remains at the utmost despite our losses.

Attached is a three-page appendix of recommendations for accommodations, including a seperate list for my officers, and myself, who all fought bravely and at great personal risk despite the dangers and cost to their own lives.

In grateful service,

Sir Daxos P. Clinton III - KAP, EKS, ICM - Foleran Armies in his Majesty's Royal Dictate.
Blood Conquers All

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the second game of this series. Look out for more (at more regular intervals) soon.

Are you kidding me? The Tyranid list was just ok.

Who takes that many zoanthropes? Take one squad in a pod and that's all you'll ever need. Plus for Zoanthropes, use lots of light weapons fire. They are only toughness 4 and their save is a 3+ invul. If you shoot them with tons of small arms fire it will slowly chip them down and you can save your high str, low ap shots for his tervigons.

His list is so shooty when in fact most of its guns won't be able to come to bare for a couple turns and his minimal amounts of effectiveness against your hordey army.

Oh and on your view of Tervigons, basically get missle launchers which are cheap as heck on units and you will go to town on Tervigons. They are monstrous creatures and should NOT be recieving cover from termaguants because the average monstrous creature size will not be getting cover from their small bodies. Then they become really easy to kill if not properly covered and even then, it will kill all of the termaguants like there's no tomorrow.

If a tyranid player uses tervigons, kill them first and usually then he will find himself with a lot less troops and he will fall apart.

How do the termaguants get twin linked storm bolters? The gun is str 4 ap 5 range 12" assualt 1. That is not even CLOSE to a storm bolter in any way nor is it twin linked.

dragon1092 wrote:Who takes that many zoanthropes? Take one squad in a pod and that's all you'll ever need. Plus for Zoanthropes, use lots of light weapons fire. They are only toughness 4 and their save is a 3+ invul. If you shoot them with tons of small arms fire it will slowly chip them down and you can save your high str, low ap shots for his tervigons.

His list is so shooty when in fact most of its guns won't be able to come to bare for a couple turns and his minimal amounts of effectiveness against your hordey army.

His Zoanthropes were throwing out a heck of a lot of small blast templates and his lance attack acing my manticore turned the win into a tie. Given that they can do both anti-horde and anti-tank and are virtually immune to good weapons seems like a great idea to me. Plus, if they're so easily killable, it would make more sense to take lots of them, rather than less.

dragon1092 wrote:Oh and on your view of Tervigons, basically get missle launchers which are cheap as heck on units and you will go to town on Tervigons. They are monstrous creatures and should NOT be recieving cover from termaguants because the average monstrous creature size will not be getting cover from their small bodies. Then they become really easy to kill if not properly covered and even then, it will kill all of the termaguants like there's no tomorrow.

If a tyranid player uses tervigons, kill them first and usually then he will find himself with a lot less troops and he will fall apart.

He was getting cover saves because the models themselves were in area terrain, not because of the termagaunts. As for missile launchers against termagons in cover, a 90-point missile launcher HWS puts down .6 wounds per turn. Assuming two (I'm now spending more points than the tervagon), it would have taken me 5 turns (which I didn't even have) to take it down, and that's assuming that I had LOS on it every turn (which my opponent could have easily denied). Sure, I had orders, but not only did a lot of my orders fail this game (and HWSs can't take voxes), but I only had about 1 turn of shooting my stuff at range before I needed to move my concern to BiDing other stuff).

In short, missile launchers are neither effective nor points effective. If I had been able to charge in my power blob, on the other hand... In any case, it was rolling doubles that got his tervagon to stop spawning.

dragon1092 wrote:How do the termaguants get twin linked storm bolters? The gun is str 4 ap 5 range 12" assualt 1. That is not even CLOSE to a storm bolter in any way nor is it twin linked.

Well he was twin-linking them somehow. Perhaps it's a zoanthrope or tervagon psychic power? He was throwing a lot of those around. A S4 AP5 twin-linked gun that you can pop out of a tervagon, rush forward and shoot (and then assault) felt a lot like storm bolters on the field.

Nice battle report. The outflanking platoon worked great. I am planning too to get one, but on 1500 points.
By the way, congratulations on beginning a new series of battle reports. I have read all of the public game series (I started reading when you published the 10th), and it is really great to see you starting up a sequel. Good luck with the next one!

Another good report. You have a very high quality paintjob for a horde army

IMO, you have very little firepower in your list. I think you would benefit from some more heavy weapons. Also, why put a HWS with Al'rahems platoon? That's a minimum of two turns of lost firepower. Mortars gain very little from flanking too, if it was an autocannon squad, I could see some value in outflanking it, but mortars?

Do you tell your opponents that priests are IC's?

Excellent battle report, i love it when a bit of fluff makes its way in there.

Borkin wrote:Excellent battle report, i love it when a bit of fluff makes its way in there.

Thanks, I aim to please.

Plasminator wrote:By the way, congratulations on beginning a new series of battle reports. I have read all of the public game series (I started reading when you published the 10th), and it is really great to see you starting up a sequel. Good luck with the next one!

Thanks! I hope to provide the same level of quality (if not moreso) than the last series. It may be awhile until I decide to animate them, though

Illumini wrote:Another good report. You have a very high quality paintjob for a horde army

Thanks! My overarching project for the past 9 months has been turning my old 1k army into this new 1850. Over like a 6 month period, I had to do 65 infantry models and two vehicles. Definitely worth it, though.

Illumini wrote:Also, why put a HWS with Al'rahems platoon? That's a minimum of two turns of lost firepower. Mortars gain very little from flanking too, if it was an autocannon squad, I could see some value in outflanking it, but mortars?

Oh, that's a typo, actually. Thanks for the catch. It should be fixed now.

Illumini wrote:IMO, you have very little firepower in your list. I think you would benefit from some more heavy weapons.

I have better than infantry heavy weapons: I have vehicle heavy weapons. Apart from the 3-5 S9+ large blast templates I was throwing around every turn, I also am bringing 8 other infantry heavy weapons. As such, I do have quite a bit, and I think they did plenty of damage.

That said, as I continue to work on my army, I'm going to phase them out. Over the course of this game, my heavy weapons killed about 30 gaunts and put down 5 zoanthropes. Meanwhile, my two powerblobs put down about 35 gaunts and took down a carnifex. For being roughly equal in damage, I think it's telling that the big guns cost 570 points for what the power blobs do for only 500 (on a stubborn, scoring unit that can't be wiped out in a few shots, no less). These power blobs give me a lot of "firepower", and thus the decision to migrate more towards them and less towards heavy guns.

In short, I don't think I had all that many problems as far as my killing power was concerned. Would al-rahem not have flubbed his rolling and my power blob 2 have made it out of combat in a timely fashion, he would have lost two more big bugs, and would have been in a much tougher place.

Plus, I don't see adding more points-inefficient guns to my list to be the way to go, personally.

Illumini wrote:Do you tell your opponents that priests are IC's?

once, I think.

Honestly, keeping that fact down low was mostly because I screwed up. I should have given both my priests spirit shards (which means that technically I was supposed to have won that game), but as I deployed everything as if the priests were part of the unit, I felt it would have been unfair to suddenly give them a free spirit point and start treating them like an IC in the middle of the game.

As for why the priest survived, it was because I've spent a lot of games with IC close combat units. I know how to keep my priest safely out of the fight while giving rerolls to the rest of the dudes. After that point, there's not a lot of purpose to attacking the priest as he doesn't give rerolls anymore, and he only has a couple of attacks hidden behind a 4++ save. Better to attack the horde of power weapon attacks behind squishey flak armor.

Ailaros wrote:

He was getting cover saves because the models themselves were in area terrain, not because of the termagaunts.

MC's don't get cover from area terrain. They are treated like tanks in that regard (need 50% obscured)

Thank you for the battle report! It sounded exciting! I was surprised that your opponent did not take many CC units (gaunts really don't count). If he did, the results might have been different.

Awesome report, sir! I always enjoy reading them.

I agree with your assessment of the current Nid codex. I think it is WAY more competitive than people on the interweb give it credit for, you just have to be creative. I was actually surprised to see that you beat the Nids at their own game, HTH combat. Those blob squads were dy-no-mite! I never really gave them much thought, but I really like that you included a priest in one. Makes them much more effective I'm sure. I will try one or two out in my next game.

Keep the bat-reps coming. They are most excellent!

Yes, lancing vehicles are what zoanthropes are really meant to do or they are meant to use those small templates on things like MEQs. On your spread out GEQs they aren't really all that effective.

Oh...about the missle launchers. I figured GEQs get them as cheap as marines do. Marines with missle launchers are the bane of Tyranids becuz they come cheap.

Yeah, I play tyranids and there is no twin linking of fleshborers. But I can see how they kinda felt like storm bolters in that they spawn 6" away move 6" and then shoot 12" but they still only get one shot each....kinda just a bad metaphor in my opinion.

Oh and I just want to make sure that you know this, but I'm not like trying to flame and tell you this was a bad report or anything or you played badly...even though obviously i sounded that way. Sorry about that. But I'm just trying to fill you in on some of the ways you can beat tyranids because once you get to know the army a bit better it wont seem so powerful at all and imperial guard should have little to no problem taking on a slow footslogging tyranid list like the one in this batrep.

Oh and just a question, why mortars? Most of the imperial guard players I see at my LGS dont ever use them. They take other heavy weapons that seem to do a fair bit more damage.

Illumini wrote:MC's don't get cover from area terrain. They are treated like tanks in that regard (need 50% obscured)

Oh, well then. Good to know. In this case I still wouldn't have been able to kill the tervagon all the way off, but that's good to know for the future.

AdeptSister wrote:Thank you for the battle report! It sounded exciting! I was surprised that your opponent did not take many CC units (gaunts really don't count). If he did, the results might have been different.

Heh, yeah, he wouldn't have gotten 6 free troops choices worth of units Honestly, the gaunts he brought weren't the problem (which largely died to artillery), it was the wave after wave of extra ones that was the headache.

I actually appreciate my opponent's ability to look at an old army in a new way when a new codex comes out. I don't know if his assessment that tyranid are now a second tier close combat army are true or not, but I like the fresh thinking.

Legion91 wrote:Awesome report, sir! I always enjoy reading them.

I agree with your assessment of the current Nid codex. I think it is WAY more competitive than people on the interweb give it credit for, you just have to be creative. I was actually surprised to see that you beat the Nids at their own game, HTH combat. Those blob squads were dy-no-mite! I never really gave them much thought, but I really like that you included a priest in one. Makes them much more effective I'm sure. I will try one or two out in my next game.

Thanks!

To be fair, "his own game" was shooting, which I only sort of beat him in. As for the HTH, well, initially I dismissed power weapons sergeants and commissars out of hand. Then I was cued in to how commissar blobs can help stop losing so badly in kill points. Curiosity led it's way around several bad ideas until I stumbled on the math for a 3x hidden power weapon stubborn blob with rerolling and an eviscerator. Obviously I'm liking it so far. We'll see how it goes.

dragon1092 wrote:Oh...about the missle launchers. I figured GEQs get them as cheap as marines do. Marines with missle launchers are the bane of Tyranids becuz they come cheap.

Yeah, I'm not up on the marine codex, how much does a ML devestator squad cost?

dragon1092 wrote:Yeah, I play tyranids and there is no twin linking of fleshborers.

Ah ha. I feel a confrontation in the future...

Did they used to be twin linked or something?

dragon1092 wrote:Oh and I just want to make sure that you know this, but I'm not like trying to flame and tell you this was a bad report or anything or you played badly...even though obviously i sounded that way. Sorry about that. But I'm just trying to fill you in on some of the ways you can beat tyranids because once you get to know the army a bit better it wont seem so powerful at all and imperial guard should have little to no problem taking on a slow footslogging tyranid list like the one in this batrep.

No offense interpreted.

The problem is that monstrous creatures are a bit of a problem for the guard. Basically we have the choice of spamming immobile crappy heavy weapons and hoping for the best, or getting really close and spamming special weapons and hoping for the best. For example, if I could drop pod combi-plasma/melta sternguard, S6 W6 creatures wouldn't be so much of a problem. For guard, on the other hand, things are a little trickier. We tend to rely on vehicles for doing heavy damage, but guard vehicles are woefully less useful against MCs than other target types.

At least only one of these MC's had wings...

dragon1092 wrote:Oh and just a question, why mortars? Most of the imperial guard players I see at my LGS dont ever use them. They take other heavy weapons that seem to do a fair bit more damage.

Guard infantry heavy weapons are expensive for what they do (as what they do factors in BS3 and ease of getting killed, etc.). Mortars don't suffer from this as badly as they're cheaper and can hide out of LOS. Plus, the mortars did do a fair amount of damage. My two HWSs downed about 12-16 termagaunts. Were they not fearless, there would have been a bunch of pinning tests thrown around on pretty low LD units.

Mortars don't do a lot of damage compared to lascannons, but they do more than half the damage for less than half the price. Those precious points can be saved for more meltaguns, et. al.

So a 5 man devastator squad with a sergeant and 4 MLs costs about 150. Its kinda ridiculous imo. I mean against the vast majority of my MCs thats a 3+ 2+ no armor save unless I have them in cover.......which is difficult if I want them to actually KILL anything.

Yeah there are spine fists which are twin linked but those you can't get on termaguants that come out of Tervigons.

One thing is the Vendettas or whatever they are called that have the 3 twin linked lascannons for like less than 150 points... Get those and you can go to town on MCs since they are also high enough most of the time MCs don't get cover.

Secondly, spamming autocannons really hurts them on your heavy weapons squads. Force a lot of saves.

Thats where chimeras come in handy too. For a super cheap vehicle you get something crazy like a heavy stubber and heavy bolter and scatter laser or something for like 60 points. THATS A LOT OF HIGH STR hits that force saves. Just saying, it kills. That's how tyranids have to kill things. Force lots of saves, use it against them.

Oh and plasma weaponry. Kills MCs like no tomorrow and its pretty cheap too. Granted you can get hot and kill your guy, but seriously, str 7 ap 2 stuff just OWNS MCs.

Yeah, this is all stuff that has happened to me. MCs are really not that tough. What I would do for a tank with 14 front armor that wouldn't get killed by plasma guns....

dragon1092 wrote:So a 5 man devastator squad with a sergeant and 4 MLs costs about 150.

Yeah, while being twice as effective. Still would take roughly 3 turns to take down a tervagon, though

dragon1092 wrote:One thing is the Vendettas or whatever they are called that have the 3 twin linked lascannons for like less than 150 points... Get those and you can go to town on MCs since they are also high enough most of the time MCs don't get cover.

But they can't shoot them all at the same time unless they sit still, which is a recipe for disaster.

dragon1092 wrote:Secondly, spamming autocannons really hurts them on your heavy weapons squads. Force a lot of saves.

Thats where chimeras come in handy too. For a super cheap vehicle you get something crazy like a heavy stubber and heavy bolter and scatter laser or something for like 60 points. THATS A LOT OF HIGH STR hits that force saves. Just saying, it kills. That's how tyranids have to kill things. Force lots of saves, use it against them.

Yeah, but the math's no good. 150 points for 6 autocannons which puts down about a wound a turn. Sure it forces saves, but it doesn't matter if they still make them. Likewise heavy stubbers and heavy bolters (and multilasers for that matter) are worthless against monstrous creatures. Looking at a single part of a weapon's statline doesn't fix that.

dragon1092 wrote:Oh and plasma weaponry. Kills MCs like no tomorrow and its pretty cheap too. Granted you can get hot and kill your guy, but seriously, str 7 ap 2 stuff just OWNS MCs.

Yeah, but remember that it's on a BS3 platform, that and you get really close to use it. Worth it to throw away a squad for 2 wounds on zoanthropes (who get invul saves though), but worth it to throw away 3 whole squads to take down a tervigon or a tyrranofex? Possibly one of the guard's better options, but it's still not great.

I'm envisioning taking rough riders at some point in the future.

dragon1092 wrote:
Yeah, this is all stuff that has happened to me. MCs are really not that tough. What I would do for a tank with 14 front armor that wouldn't get killed by plasma guns....

Heh, what I wouldn't give for S9 T6 W6 infantry. MCs can't be meltabombed or killed in a single shot, as my tanks have been, or assaulted in rear armor from the front

I suppose the real thing is that there are lots and lots of armies bring vehicles, while tyranid are the only army that can spam MCs, so there aren't as many dedicated anti-MC weapons out there, at least not for the guard.

Rough riders destroy MCs (but do not take that awful Unit Character)
Yarrik is also decent in your kind of list and is not to shabby against MCs as long as you get the charge

Ailaros wrote:
I roll for reserves for my 1st squad with Al Rahem. The number is too low. Then the astropath bumps it up by 1, and magically they're ready after all. I roll for what side they arrive on and, disastrously, they come in from the left. Then the astropath worked his magic, and suddenly I was able to choose which side to bring them in on. This guy rules!

I don't know if you meant to say it or not but the astropath does not allow you to pick the side you bring your outflankers on all you get is a reroll.

Well, the main point I'm trying to make man is that you have to kill those tervigons and those should have been your main priority with all of your single shot heavy weapons. You had a lot of problems with the termaguants. The tervigons when they die force 3d6 wounds on any termaguants within 6". That's absolutely devastating. You're right each individual squad may not be able to dish a lot of damage out onto the tervigon by itself. That's why you focus fire like any good general does at what is key to the opponent.

Those mortars may seem super cost efficient but they don't lay down the kind of fire power you needed. You already had plenty of large blast templates and it is unfortunate that you missed a lot but thats the game. You need to balance your force out more with more types of weapons. Autocannons, heavy bolters, missle launchers, and lascannons would have greatly added to your ability to maim and kill him. Especially the lascannons. They would eviscerate his tervigons, tyrannofex, and could insta kill those lovely zoanthropes.

Thats the amazing thing about guard though you can take lots of those plasma guns and yeah they're expensive but you have so many troops around them to give them cover saves and make it impossible to be charged etc.

Al'Rahem seems like bad choice imo. He's way expensive for what he does. Plus you are guard you really aren't meant to close with tyranids. If anything he shoulda had outflankers and you shouldn't have.

Oh and I would forgo getting any power weapons on sergeants and stuff. For 10 points? THATS RIDICULOUS. Thats the same as for marines which make MUCH better use of them.

Also, melta guns are just too short ranged to use effectively against tyranids. You want to stay safe and away from the tyranids. And yes, no matter how much fire power you have they will inevitably make it to your lines, but as you can see from his list there is no powerhouse assault unit with a lot of attacks. He would not have been able to mow through your lines with his unit choice.

Oh and also those autocannons woulda wrecked the harpy. Its like toughness 5 with 4+ save. Absolutely woulda ripped through him.

Idk, I just have seen SOOOOO many effective imperial guard players that deliver staggering amounts of firepower their first turn.

I understand you were trying a blob tactic. I have had that used against me. I'm telling you that chimeras pack a lot of firepower with all those shots coming from them. Vendettas and Valkries are deadly too. Autocannons are vicious for 75 points. Melta guns cost more for the gun and they don't have the range to make them as useful. These are all of course my own opinion, but I just don't see how a pitiful list like the tyranid list you went against was able to even hurt you at all.

Except of course the outflankers......they look like they were meant to die.

Old Man Yarrik wrote:Yarrik is also decent in your kind of list and is not to shabby against MCs as long as you get the charge

Yeah, so is Al' Rahem, unless he flubbs his rolls and the MC in question has an invul save. I think one of the things I learned from this is that against tyranid, depending on the particular conditions, I should deploy the priest with Al' Rahem, rather than with the power blob.

WingsofCadia wrote:I don't know if you meant to say it or not but the astropath does not allow you to pick the side you bring your outflankers on all you get is a reroll.

Yeah, what was actually happening in this case was the astropath causing a 1 to be rerolled up to a 6.

dragon1092 wrote:Well, the main point I'm trying to make man is that you have to kill those tervigons and those should have been your main priority with all of your single shot heavy weapons. You had a lot of problems with the termaguants. The tervigons when they die force 3d6 wounds on any termaguants within 6". That's absolutely devastating.

Oh, wow. I didn't know about the tervagon dying thing. Good to know.

The reason I didn't unload on them with artillery was because they weren't able to insta-kill the tervagons. Furthermore, you've got to remember the mission. The tervagons were only worth two points apiece, and I would have only killed 1. True, I was only able to kill a single squad of zoanthropes, but if the invul saves wouldn't have been so crazy, I would have gotten twice the points. Plus. My strategy was to take down his shard-heavy synapse and just brush the termagaunts away. Obviously that didn't happen, but the termagaunts were still not that big of a problem, I think.

dragon1092 wrote:Those mortars may seem super cost efficient but they don't lay down the kind of fire power you needed. You already had plenty of large blast templates and it is unfortunate that you missed a lot but thats the game. You need to balance your force out more with more types of weapons. Autocannons, heavy bolters, missle launchers, and lascannons would have greatly added to your ability to maim and kill him. Especially the lascannons. They would eviscerate his tervigons, tyrannofex, and could insta kill those lovely zoanthropes.
...
I have had that used against me. I'm telling you that chimeras pack a lot of firepower with all those shots coming from them. Vendettas and Valkries are deadly too. Autocannons are vicious for 75 points.

I would take this advice seriously were it not for the math. You use words like "greatly maim" and "eviscerate" when the statistics show nothing of the sort. I can only conclude that your opponent must be particularly lucky with his autocannons, and multilasers, or you have a strange definition of the above words.

I think the most important thing here is the opportunity cost. If I were to "balance" my list, this would mean exchanging effective guns for less effective ones. What would I get rid of? I don't see how I have many effective guns to spare, tbh. I mean, I could consider dropping a few meltabombs to turn a meltagun squad into a plasma gun squad, but in this case, I don't see how much more effective that would be.

dragon1092 wrote:Al'Rahem seems like bad choice imo. He's way expensive for what he does.

Ah, but that's just because of dice. Al'Rahem comes with a power weapon that inflicts instant death. He could have aced a full-health tervagon or tyrranofex with a single sword swipe. He SHOULD have ruled the school, but it just so happens that he missed with 3 of his 4 attacks and the other one bounced off an invul save (thus my earlier comment about the priest). I'm looking forward to him doing much more damage in the future.

Plus, in my book he's worth the points for making 400 points of guardsmen outflank in an list that suffers somewhat in the mobility department. Any damage he does is an added bonus.

dragon1092 wrote:Plus you are guard you really aren't meant to close with tyranids. If anything he shoulda had outflankers and you shouldn't have.

Oh and I would forgo getting any power weapons on sergeants and stuff. For 10 points? THATS RIDICULOUS. Thats the same as for marines which make MUCH better use of them.

Also, melta guns are just too short ranged to use effectively against tyranids. You want to stay safe and away from the tyranids. And yes, no matter how much fire power you have they will inevitably make it to your lines, but as you can see from his list there is no powerhouse assault unit with a lot of attacks. He would not have been able to mow through your lines with his unit choice.

Except of course the outflankers......they look like they were meant to die.

Ha ha! Unfortunately, we're just going to have to disagree on this one. Calling tyranid assault and guard static gunline and then folding one's arms is not suited to a changing world, in my opinion. Yeah, his shooty nid army may or may not do well, and my power blobs only look good on my calculator. Thinking outside the box is both necessary and proper.

So far, I've got a good feeling about my outflanking power blobs. Perhaps my patience will run out before I learn how to use them right, but I had fun and success in equal measure this game, so we'll see how they play out in the future.

dragon1092 wrote:Idk, I just have seen SOOOOO many effective imperial guard players that deliver staggering amounts of firepower their first turn. I just don't see how a pitiful list like the tyranid list you went against was able to even hurt you at all.

Well, hopefully the battle report was able to shine some light on why it went the way it did.

I think what's really going on here is a case of "battered codex syndrome". My opponent was likewise very pessimistic about his new army "because of what the new codex did to it". I don't think this pessimism is well-founded, and that it's playing up the guard as being an invincible alpha strike army of doom while tyranid are incapable of being effective ever.

My opponent brought out 24 T6 wounds that had some really nasty weaponry on it, along with 9 multiwound models with 3+ invul saves (also with nasty weapons). The guard can't simply shout "pew pew" at that and make it go away, nor can I make sweater saves against termagaunt guns or the tyrranofexes inferno cannon. Tyranid are very capably armed and armored, at least when you bring as many big bugs as my opponent.

Respect the bug.

Hi Ailaros

Seen you cop a lot of flak in other threads, so I thought would check out your threads. While i'm not a huge fan of some of your list (personal taste, seems to work for you though) I have to admitt I enjoyed the report greatly, nice action pictures, good story based narrative and a great looking army. Seriously, looked at some of you scratch builds awesome does not describe them.

Loved the Al'rahem, atropath combination, seemed to have worked brilliantly with the power blob. I am probably going to steal it

Also liked your heavy support choices big fan of Basilisks and very tempted by Manticores.

I'm going to go read the first part of this now, keep up the good work.

SpankHammer

I can testify to the tactical candy that is Al Rahem's outflanking platoon. In two games from last week I used it to basically rotate the table and fight lengthwise against my marine opponent. The best part (and the reason for the outflanking in the first place) is that it gave me the ability to set up on a very nice firing position. and get some objectives at the same time. I would go as far as to say that Al Rahem is a must for a non-mechanized guard army in order to get some shock troops in position. He is really dirt cheap for what you get in tactical flexibility.

Ailaros, have you considered using a Colossus heavy mortar instead of the Basilisk?

Plasminator wrote:I would go as far as to say that Al Rahem is a must for a non-mechanized guard army in order to get some shock troops in position. He is really dirt cheap for what you get in tactical flexibility.

Bingo. It's a 100 point upgrade that allows me to put a lot of troops square on an objective without getting shot at first. I mean, if there was a special character that allowed a whole infantry platoon to deepstrike, you know you'd see it fielded.

That it comes with a plasma pistol, a power weapon that causes instant death, and also causes other stuff in your army to show up from reserves better is the delicious candy coating on top.

SpankHammer III wrote:Loved the Al'rahem, atropath combination, seemed to have worked brilliantly with the power blob. I am probably going to steal it

Feel free

SpankHammer III wrote:Also liked your heavy support choices big fan of Basilisks and very tempted by Manticores.

Plasminator wrote:Ailaros, have you considered using a Colossus heavy mortar instead of the Basilisk?

Manticores are boss. End of.

As for the basilisk v. colossus, it could really go either way. The reason I chose this particular way are:

- the basilisk is 15 points cheaper.
- the basilisk is good against vehicles.
- the basilisk has no mandatory minimum range.

Were I to go for a colossus, I'd lose 3 meltabombs and the ability to hit vehicles with a piece of S9 Ordnance that ignores cover, and my ability to be effective against my opponent's scariest targets towards the end of the game. What I'd gain is the ability to kill infantry in cover. It's not that I don't consider this to be valuable. It's that I also really value my anti-tank, and my power blobs also ignore cover. Without the power blobs, then I'd be much more seriously tempted to take a colossus.

Loved the Noble who was running the show. Enjoyed reading the fluff.

Good to see a Guard infantry horde winning too. Mechanized Guard is cool and all, but the codex is good at things besides that. Plus Al'Rahem is just awesome! Good show!

Love your army - very distinctive from all the other IG out there while still being very believable as an IG force. Just the right amount of fluff too.

Thanks!

So I just went through and reread this and I picked up on something. I think the reason I didn't win this outright was because I had bad target prioritization.

So, the whole point was to get shards and, by far, the most shards came from his Z's and MC's. I spent my artillery shooting at his Z's (because I knew better than to shoot them at MC's). My opponent told me he thought I should have focused even more on his MC's with my artillery and I sort of agreed with him (even though I don't know how I could have done any more, as almost every shot was aimed at one).

But now that strikes me as a mistake. I already knew that artillery wouldn't do anything against MC's, but I should have had a better appreciation for how the 3++ would have prevented me from hurting his Z's. Meanwhile, my power blobs and special weapons teams wouldn't have any problems. THEY should have been my primary objective scorers.

This means that what my artillery SHOULD have done was shoot at that which was the greatest threat to my infantry's ability to close in on his MCs. As such, I really should have focused much more on taking down his termagaunts.

For example, if I would have cleared away his termagaunts on the right before Al'Rahem showed up, then the blob could have charged his zoanthropes and Al'Rahem himself could have taken down the tervigon. Instead, the blobs wasted their time attacking termagaunts: something with which my artillery was plenty able to handle on its own.

Likewise, if I would have focused on his spawning of termagaunts in the middle, my power blob on the left may have survived better in order to be able to actually get in and attack something else, rather than running and hiding after it got too badly mangled by fire. Manticores certainly could have thinned his blob of termagaunts in the middle.

In the end, I wasn't able to get the right damage on the right target. I see most of this as having to do with my best anti-MC/Z units getting uneccessarily entangled with his termagaunts, Instead of the big units attacking the big units and the little the little, it really should have been the other way around.

I'll make sure to remember these things for next time...

Great report and way to stick to your list.

I have had Al'Rahem used against and by me I he works really well with blobs and astropaths either for objective grabs or KP denial. It's working for you and you like it, 'nuff said.

Looking forward to reading some more of these great reports.

Cheers,

kh

Nice to see a fully-painted, high model count IG army on the field! Looks great. I think you need to find a location with better tables/an opponent with a painted force though, currently your army looks like its slumming a bit.

I remember you hate autocannons, but would you consider taking ML HWS instead of mortars? 2 for the price of 3, but they are useful against MCs and vehicles as well as providing blasts.

With regards to opponent's models and terrain, this is pretty much the only place I can play. I'm thinking about bringing in some of my own terrain to spice things up a bit.

As for MLs, if I find myself playing against tyranid a lot and find myself having chronic problems with MCs, then yeah, I'd consider them as, as you note, they're basically the same weapon. For now, I think I'll keep the mortars, but I have some ML guys made that I can swap in if I find that more S8 is what's needed.

Also, I have another game tonight. Look for the next report in the series tomorrow.