jy2 wrote:I'm going to do this report just a little differently. Don't have time to work on the report tonight so I'm just going to post the lists first. There's something new/different about this battle. See if you can figure out what it is just from the lists.
I guess no one guessed it, so I'll tell you guys....
This time, I'm playing Tyranids.
Yes, this is the type of tyranid list that I envisioned way back when the new Grey Knights codex came out that would have a good fighting chance against the knights. Fight fire with fire, and should they choose to assault, then screen/tarpit and then counter-assault. There seems to be this notion going around that tyranids cannot compete against the new Grey Knights. I say nonsense! Tyranids are definitely still competitive, even against the grey knights or dark eldar or imperial guards or space wolves or any of the newer codices out there. Sure, it's a tough fight against the knights, but it's not impossible. You just need to be more "strategic".
My opponent is Bobby. The last time I faced him, it was my purifiers against his paladins, and it was a tough fight. (Battle report can be found
here.) This time, he brought something totally different, something that I definitely did not expect. He told me that he was frustrated at the lack of mobility that plagued his paladin
GK-builds so this time, he went to the other extreme. He brought a highly mobile army with trip-ravens and shunting dreadknights. I'll go into his list some more in the Pre-game Analysis.
Honestly, I feel confident I can take his army....that is, if my psyker Tyranid monstrous creatures (
TMC's) don't die to his mindstrike missiles. To me, those are probably the scariest weapons in his army.
PRE-GAME ANALYSIS:
Grey Knights:
Bobby's brought what I would consider a very deceptive list. It's a very fast army. It's also got a lot of tricks to it. He's got the Summoning that can instantly teleport his units from anywhere on the board to his librarian. Thanks to the mystics that his librarian would most likely join, they won't scatter. He can even teleport his other stormravens. And when they land, they're getting 3+ cover thanks to the Shrouding. He can deepstrike his terminators and/or his paladins to the opposite flank. If I go for it, then he can use the Summoning to bring them back to his main force so that it's his entire army against my split forces. He can summon triple-melta henchmens if my
TMC's or even my raveners get too close to him for some melta-love. Luckily for me, now he can only cast Summoning once each turn thanks to the new
FAQ's.
Then he's got single-model "distraction" paladin units that are both a threat to my
TMC's with their hammers or to my gribblies with Holocaust. He's got 3 scary hammer units in terminators, purifiers and purgation squad that I cannot ignore. Finally, he's got the very nasty mindstrike missiles from his stormravens. To most armies, mindstrike missiles
aren't so scary. They're just S4 small blasts meant to deal with hordes, and they're just 1-shot each. However, to psykers, they are fearsome indeed. Any psyker hit by the template automatically suffers Perils in the Warp and you cannot allocate it like you can wounds from a shooting attack (you can allocate the wound from the small blast but not the Perils effect). Now, against a large model on a big 60mm base without any invuln's, that is indeed scary. What's even worse is for those tyranid players who converted their tervigons using trygon bases. Oh, did I forget to mention no cover? Ughhh.....
There's nothing I can do about the mindstrikes but hope they scatter far. However, I've also got to watch out for his dreadknights. A lot of armies with AP1/2 guns usually wouldn't worry too much about these big guys, but for tyranids, we don't have any guns that can really hurt these guys (except for our zoanthropes, which I didn't bring). The only units they have to be concerned about is my Swarmlord and my raveners. Otherwise, they are a
TMC-killer.
Though while he's got speed, in Seize Ground, I've got the advantage with at least 9 scoring units. In Capture and Control, I think it's about even. I've got just too many scoring units but don't have the mobility to get to his objective easily. While he's got only 4 scoring units, of which 3 are relatively fragile, his advantage is in the fact that he can dictate where the battles will take place. Basically, if he wanted, with his mobility he could have all the action take place in my half of the table and tie me up so that I wouldn't even be able to reach his objective. In Annihilation, I think it's also about even. I've got 15KP's to his 16. While I feel that I've got superior shooting, his mindstrike missiles may even up the odds here. Other than his mindstrikes, I've got some resilience to his shooting. On the other hand, he's got the mobility to stay out of range of mine, at least for maybe 2 turns.
With my shorter range, I would want a Pitched Battle deployment. Dawn of War and Spearhead are a disadvantage to me as I have further to travel. He doesn't really care which deployment he gets as he has the flexibility to easily and quickly redeploy.
While normally, I advocate keeping your forces united. In this case, it may not be so bad for him to split up his forces (or a part of it at least). This would force me to split up my forces as well. Then on his turn, he could just summon that unit back together with the rest of his army. Let's see if he uses that tactic (I hope not...because I'm experienced enough not to fall for it).
Tyranids:
I forgot a tervigon so I had to proxy my
GK dread as the tyrannofex (used my tyrannofex as the tervigon instead). Also, while my raveners are modeled with guns, in this game they just have rending claws and scything talons.
There are several reasons why I think my nids can hang with the knights:
1) One of the weaknesses of a stormraven list is that they are vulnerable to spammed-shooty lists. Well, stormravens....say hello to my little....hive guards. That's why I have confidence I can take his army. 18 S8 shots, of which they ignore any cover that is not flat-out cover or smokes, should pretty much kills his transports, even with 3+ cover.
2) The Swarmlord. If he doesn't kill this guy early, he's going to have a hard time trying to get close to my army. And he will need to get close to me to do any real damage. Swarmy will carve up any unit he touches....especially after I soften them up first with some shooting.
3) Raveners. Cavalry is in. Period. Thunderwolves, fiends of slaanesh, dark eldar beastpacks, raveners...they all give us what we really need, and that is a long range threat. Raveners will wreck anything in their path as long as they can stay within range of Shadows in the Warp. Their specialty? Ripping apart dreadknights. The raveners and my Swarmlord are the main threats to his dreadknights....and almost everything else. I just need to watch out for that purgation squad and make sure they assault within the protection of Shadows.
4) Biovores. Any disembarked infantry not locked in assault are going to be eating 6 large pie plates a turn. As they are barrages, my biovores don't need
LOS and his henchmen warriors won't be getting cover unless they're actually in area terrain (or there is actually terrain between them and the blast itself). You know those long fangs, heavy weapon squads and objective campers most armies have? This is my answer to them. Biovores are the real deal.
5) Shadows in the Warp. I've played enough against shadows to know how annoying it is to psykers. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot. I get to use it to my advantage, and believe me, I need it. It has a 50% chance to stop LD10 while they are in range and a 62.5% chance to stop LD9. If he hasn't already, he's going to be cursing it when he tries to cast his psychic powers in close range (i.e. assault).
My overall strategy is to stick together and get within range to shoot down his birds. Then, I'm just going to shoot the crap out of his army and dare him to come to me.
BTW, I'll be advancing while shooting the crap out of his army until he has no where else to run. Then Swarmlord and the raveners are going to have a nice meal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mission: Annihilation
Deployment: Pitched Battle
Initiative: Tyranids
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Deployment:
Map of the board.
Tyranid deployment. I make sure to space out my synapse so that scattering mindstrike missiles won't hit another synapse
TMC. I forgot 1 of my
TMC's so will be proxying the dreadnought for my tyrannofex (I will change it out later on when one of my
TMC's die).
Raveners all have rending claws and scything talons only. I leave 1 unit of termagants in reserves.
Grey Knights deployment. He deploys as far away from my guys as possible. Librarian is in the middle raven with his large henchmen squad (with the mystics). Coteaz is in the right raven with the purifiers. Purgations are in the left raven. Every thing else will be in reserves, with the terminators/paladins deepstriking.
He fails to steal the initiative
twice and awaaayyyyy we go!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tyranids 1
Tyranid movement. Almost all my units runs with the exception of the tyrannofex. Swarmlord's unit, middle and right hive guards get
FNP from the tervigons. One of my right tervigons takes a wound to Perils but still successfully casts it.
My t-fex shoots at his librarian's raven. Despite its mighty S10 cannon, I only manage to glance the raven once, which leads to it getting shaken. Bahh!
Grey Knights 1
GK movement. Librarian's raven moves flat-out. He easily shakes off the shaken raven thanks to Fortitude. Uh, oh...now here comes the pain.
He fires 9 mindstrike missiles at the closest tervigon and wipe him out. They also put 1W on my left hive guard unit and killed a bunch of termagants.
Power of the Machine Spirit (
PotMS) lascannons from his ravens put 2W on my tyrannofex.
That wasn't too bad.
I was expecting a lot worse, like 2 of my
TMC's dying. Or him taking out Swarmy. I'll take it.
GK: 1, Tyranids: 0
Tyranids 2
Nid movement. Most of my guys except for my right-most hive guards and the t-fex runs.
Only 1 unit of hive guards and the t-fex was able to fire. I'm not sure which did it, but I explode Coteaz's raven. Biovores then go to work. After 6 pie plates, I kill off half of his purifiers. It would've been more, but Coteaz was shrugging off the blasts like champ.
GK: 1, Tyranids: 1
Grey Knights 2
Terminators are the only unit (out of 5?) that comes in. They land safely via the teleport homer. Librarian summons Coteaz and purifiers onto the top of the hill. Both dreadknights shunt forwards and the purgation raven moves flat-out.
He then concentrates his shooting - 3 mindstrikes and 2
tl-lascannons - onto my wounded tervigon but isn't quite able to finish him off (1W left). One of the raveners also take a wound from a mindstrike blast.
His terminators take out my termagant screen and double-heavy incinerators as well as 1
PotMS tl-multi-melta reduces my right raveners to just 2 models.
GK: 2, Tyranids: 1
Tyranids 3
Overview of the top of Turn 3 (taken at the end of Turn 2).
The swarm cometh. Tervigons catalyze (
FNP's) Swarmy's unit and the raveners. Termagants come in from reserves behind his dreadknight and stormraven. Middle tervigon spawns 6 termagants and craps out while doing so.
As you can probably see, I'm trying to surround his stormraven so that if I am able to wreck it, then his purgation unit would have no place to disembark. Then they would be dead.
I fire 2 units of hive guards at his librarian's raven. That's 12 S8 shots of which 8 should hit and 4 should glance/penetrate. With only a 6+ cover from shrouding, I only manage to stun it. Are you kidding me?
My other unit of hive guards and my t-fex fires at his purgation's raven and also stun it (this one is a little more acceptable as it had a 3+ shrouded flat-out cover save). On the bright side, his librarian takes 1W from Perils for rolling snake-eyes (1,1) while casting Shrouding.
In other shooting, biovores bombard his terminators....and kill 3! Fortunately for him, they pass both pinning and morale.
Charge! Termagants multi-charge his dreadknight and stormraven. Now why would I want to charge his raven when I can't possibly hurt it? Because I wanted it surrounded, that's why.
Swarmlord, who cast Prefered Enemy on his own unit, charges the dreadknight. The 2-ravener unit goes for the long shot and assaults his stormraven.
Termagants don't do anything to his dreadknight and after No Retreat saves, are down to just 4 gants. The raveners, needing 6's to hit and then 6's to rend and then another 5-6 to pen, actually beat the 1 in 108 odds to penetrate his raven. They rip off its lascannon.
Lastly, the Swarmlord totally whiffs in combat, rolling 2 1's and 2 2's to wound his dreadknight (and thus not wounding). His dreadknight, in turn, fails to hurt the Swarmlord as well and survives what should have been certain death from Swarmy's boneswords (they cause Instant Death).
What a crappy round. I can't believe I didn't kill anything! There should've been a dead stormraven and dreadknight this round!
GK: 2, Tyranids: 1
Grey Knights 3
Both paladins come in and deepstrike without scatter thanks to his raven's teleport homer.
Both henchmen units come in as well and run towards terrain.
Purgation's stormraven fails to cast Fortitude due to Shadows so it remains there. Librarian's stormraven, however, shrugs it off and moves flat-out.
Coteaz's unit fails to make it down the hill so they spread out instead. Terminators advance.
Terminators open fire and kill one of my hive guards. He also puts 1W on my middle hive guards (from stunned raven, perhaps? Don't quite remember).
Shadows block 1 Holocaust attempt by his paladin, but the other paladin unit successfully gets it off against my termagants. My termagants go-to-ground and survive Holocaust as well as stormbolter fire from his purifiers.
With his only other shooting, his stormraven's
tl-lascannon fails to remove the last wound from my tervigon who was out in the open.
Terminators assault my 2-hive guard unit.
They do 2W to it and No Retreat wipes out the squad. They then consolidate back and away from my Swarmlord.
Swarmy then takes out his dreadknight. In another display of awesomesauce, my 2-ravener unit once again rends his purgation raven and manages to re-stun it.
GK: 3, Tyranids: 2
Tyranids 4
Overview of the beginning of Turn 4.
Now I have a choice to make. My Swarmlord can either go after his 2 paladins or his dreadknight locked in combat against my 3 termagants. The strategic part of me screams at me to go after his mobility and thusly, take out his dreadknight. But then that would let his 2 paladins rampage through my army (though very slowly). Those paladins can easily get 2 kill points from my biovores and termagants. But then the more sensible part of me tells me that those paladins are worth 2 easy kill points (at least for my Swarmlord). Finally, I decide to do the sensible thing. Swarmy goes after the paladins.
The rest of my army moves ever closer to his units. This may have been a mistake on my part, but I decide
not to spawn termagants with my last tervigon yet. Also, in an utter show of incompetance, both tervigons fail to cast
FNP (both rolled 6,5 for their psychic tests). Tyrannofex (I switched out the dreadnought back to the carnifex model) gets in front of the wounded tervigon to give him cover.
In another display of utter incompetance, 6 hive guards fail to destroy his purgation raven and only manage to destroy its other gun. That's 12 S8 shots without any cover!!!
Well, almost no cover. His librarian casts Shrouding for a 6+ cover...and he still makes 2 of them!!!
However, where my hive guards failed, my t-fex pulls through and blows up his stormraven.
Biovores then do their thing. One of he barrages, however, scatters far away and hits his dreadknight instead. I kill 2 termagants and 3 purgation knights. Fortunately for my opponent, they pass 2 pinning checks (1 for the explosion and the other for the biovores) as well as morale.
Tyranids run.
Charge! Swarmy's unit multi-charges the 2 paladins. 2-ravener unit charges through terrain into his purgation unit, and the other ravener unit assaults his last stormraven.
If 2 raveners can pen 1 stormraven, what do you suppose 5 raveners can do to it? Nothing....
The rest of assault sees his dreadknight kill my last termagant, and his purgation squad wipe out my 2 raveners due to charging through terrain (and Sanctuary).
Swarmy kills 1 paladin and his guards put 1W on the other paladin. In return, his paladin wounds one of my tyrant guards and then passes morale.
Finally, both his dreadknight and purgation unit consolidate 5-6" forwards.
GK: 5, Tyranids: 4
Grey Knights 4
GK movement. Librarian's unit disembarks. Terminators prepare to assault my raveners. Purgations go after my hive guards and his dreadknight goes after my tervigon.
Stormraven then moves flat-out to get an open shot at my wounded tervigon.
4 incinerators roast my 3-hive guard unit.
3 meltas, boltguns, stormbolters and 1 psycannon only manage to kill 2 raveners.
Lastly, his stormraven successfully takes out my tervigon with a lascannon shot. The ensuing explosion kills the 4-termagant unit that was nearby. Ouch! 2KP's with just 1 shot.
Then it's onto assault. Terminators and henchmen multi-assault my raveners. Dreadknight charges my last tervigon.
His terminators whiff and his crusaders put 1W on my raveners, killing 1 in the process. In turn, I direct all my attacks against his henchmen and kill a few, breaking them in the process. I cannot sweep them though, as his terminators passed morale.
His dreadknight wounds my tervigon just once. However, that is all it takes as he passes his psychic test on
3D6 to activate his force weapon and kill my tervigon. His death throws kill some more termagants from my last termagant unit.
Lastly, Swarmy kills off his other paladin.
GK: 9, Tyranids: 5
What a painful round. Bobby rolled well this turn and took 4KP's from me. I am way behind now. But all is not lost yet. His henchmen unit is falling back. Next turn, Swarmy should be able to multi-charge both his purgation unit as well as his terminators if I do it correctly. And then I have 3 hive guards and a t-fex to try to take down his last raven. Can I do it?
To be concluded.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry, had to step out. Now for the conclusion.
Tyranids 5
Overview of the beginning of Turn 5.
Tyranid movement. Besides the Swarmlord, I've lost all my synapse now. My hive guards are out of synapse range and so have to test for Instinctive Behaviour. Unfortunately for me, they fail and have to shoot at the closest target. Fortunately for me, however, his stormraven is the closest target.
Swarmy moves towards his purgations and terminators. I plan to wipe them out in a multi-assault.
My hive guards fire at his stormraven. They cannot kill a tank if their lives depended on it. Instead, they only knock out both stormraven weapons.
My biovores fire at his purgation unit all nicely bunched up. 1 scatters pretty far away (onto his dreadknight) but the other one hits. I kill a few purgation knights but fail to hurt his dread.
Now for the big assault. Swarmy slams into his terminators while the 2 tyrant guards hit his purgation unit. Then my t-fex charges the dreadknight to try to prevent him from rampaging through my army.
I kill all but 1 purgation. I think he only causes 1W to my raveners. Then Swarmy hits his terminators 5 times thanks to Preferred Enemy and wound 5 times. He then rolls 4 6's out of 5 5++ invuln saves. "Roll them again," I tell him, "Swarmy's boneswords forces you to re-roll successful invulns." So he picks up the dice and roll another 4 6's.
WTF!
So only 1 terminator dies. He still loses by 3-4 because of his purgation losses. Purgation knight fails morale and runs. However, terminators pass morale and keeps me locked in.
I wanted them to break so that Swarmy could go after either his dreadknight or Coteaz and his purifiers. Instead, now I'm stuck in combat still.
More bad news for me. His dreadknight claims another
TMC victim by passing his psychic test on
3D6 and force weaponing my tyrannofex to death.
GK: 10, Tyranids: 5
Grey Knights 5
Purgation continues to flee as he is within 6" of my units. His henchmen, however, regroups. His storm raven then moves flat-out to block out my units.
His dreadknight goes after my last unit of hive guards. The lone gant lying down went to ground last turn. He tries to incinerate both my hive guards and the last termagant but his template is just short. It does, however, kill off one of the hive guards. Fortunately, they are within Swarmy's synapse range.
His dreadknight then assaults. For the 3rd time in a row, he passes his
3D6 psychic test to activate his force weapon and wipes out my hive guards.
Swarmy continues his onslaught.
This time, his terminators aren't as fortunate as they are wiped out.
GK: 11, Tyranids: 6
With this, we roll to see if the game continues and the die comes up with a '2'. Game over
GK: 11, Tyranids: 7 (His fleeing purgation counts as a
KP for me.)
Victory to the Grey Knights!!!
Aftermath of the battle.
After the game, we briefly played out Turn 6 to see if I could catchup. Swarmy would go on to kill Coteaz and the purifiers and the raveners would most likely have killed off his henchmen unit for 3KP's. His dreadknight would most likely have killed off my last termagant for 1KP. I didn't play out my shooting phase to see if the biovores could kill his 3 henchmen units (or at least break them), but I don't think I would've been able to catch up.
Post-game Analysis to come later.
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
.....LVO GT 2014 Team Tournament - Best Generals
1850 Points NovaMarines
200 Point Kill Team
200 Point Possessed Kill Team 
