Round One: Grey Knights ~ You're Reading It!
Round Two: Blood Angels ~
Click Here! Round Three: Space Marines ~
Click Here! I have been playing Tyranids for just over two months and have been to three tournaments with them. I am preparing to play in my first ever
GT in February and thus have tried a different list type every time to lean what will be both the most successful and fun. After going W:1 and L:2 with Tervigon spam and W:2, L:0, and T:1 with Gargoyle wall shuffle forward style list it is time that I try the Tyranid reserve bomb. My list at 1850 is as follows;
Hive Tyrant (Wings/Hive Command/2 Sets of Twin-Linked Devourers/Paroxysm/Psychic Scream)
10 Ymgarl Genestealers (No Upgrades)
11 Genestealers (No Upgrades)
11 Genestealers (No Upgrades)
10 Genestealers (No Upgrades)
Tervigon (Catalyst/Cluster Spines/Scything Talons)
11 Termagants (No Upgrades)
Carnifex (2 Sets of Twin-Linked Devourers)
~Mycetic Spore (No Upgrades)
Trygon (Adrenal Glands)
Trygon (Adrenal Glands)
When posted online people said that it couldn’t work. Not only is it unreliable for me to rely on reserves, or that it is low on synapse, but also that a list with this many monstrous creatures will fail due to lack of
LOS blocking cover. I considered trying a different list but couldn’t find anything else that felt like me. I may play to win, but I also play for fun, and competitive or not this list looked like fun to me.
This is my first time at the Fantasy Flight Games Event Center, and I must say it is a great venue. The tables are well made and there was plenty of
LOS blocking terrain. The building also was perfectly clean and while it was clearly a gaming store, it did not carry the dingy forgot about feel of other gaming stores I have played in. One thing that was not good about Fantasy Flight is that they did not put on the website that one needed to pre-register for the event. This leaves myself and several others, including Hulksmash, sitting on the side waiting to see if there was enough no shows to get in (Also present is
Dark Heresy 40K RPG developer Mack Martin). Both of us were fortunately able to get a spot in the field of 22, though not everyone who showed up was that lucky.
The tournament is three rounds of two hours. Each round has three objectives given point values of 8, 4, and 2. Let’s go right into round one!
Round One: Jeff (Grey Knights)
Castellan Crowe
Inquisitor Lord (Hammer Hand/Rad+Psychotrope Grenades/2 Servo Skulls)
Techmarine (Power Sword/Servo Harness/Rad+Blind Grenades)
5 Purifiers (3 Sword/2 Cannons/Razorback with a Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter)
5 Purifiers (3 Sword/2 Cannons/Razorback with a Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter)
5 Purifiers (2 Sword/2 Cannons/Razorback with a Twin-Linked Heavy Bolter)
8 Purifiers (5 Halberd/2 Incinerators/Daemonhammer/Rhino with a Storm Bolter)
8 Purifiers (5 Halberd/2 Cannons/Daemonhammer/Rhino with a Storm Bolter)
Dreadnought (2 Twin-Linked Psybolt Auto-Cannons)
Dreadnought (2 Twin-Linked Psybolt Auto-Cannons)
Dreadnought (2 Twin-Linked Psybolt Auto-Cannons)
Tyranids do not like seeing all of those Purifiers. I played Jeff during my first tournament with Tyranids and had a narrow loss against his Grey Knights. He is a fun player who has a great sense of humor. A wonderful draw to try a list out with.
Dawn of War Deployment
8 Points-Seize Ground. 5 objectives with one in the center of the table and two on each players half.
4 Points-Kill Points.
2 Points-The most scoring units completely within 12” of opponent’s table edge.
Jeff wins the roll and chooses to go first. We place objectives and we end up with four on the left side of the table and one on the right. Jeff deploys two empty Rhinos centrally. I deploy my Tervigon behind
LOS blocking terrain. The Ymgarls are in the terrain near the four objectives.
Grey Knights 1 Jeff moves the rest of his army on. He embarks the Rhino squads one with the Inquisitor and one with the Tech Marine. Both move forward toward the center of the table. He can not see the Tervigon due to night fighting. Crowe is slinking around behind the center wall.
Tyranids 1 Just hanging out in hiding mostly. I spawn a brood of six and get doubles in the process. They run away to hide.
Grey Knights 2 He spreads his vehicles out and moves forward. He does 3 wounds to the Tervigon shooting.
Tyranids 2 I receive my gants who hide by the others, two squads of Genestealers who outflank by the top left corner, the Carnifex whose spore plops between who tanks, the Ymgarls, and two Trygons, one of which scatters away from the central area.
The spore shakes a razorback with its tentacles. In combat Ymgarls wreck a Rhino and Genestealers wreck a razorback.
Grey Knights 3 Jeff tank shocks the Ymgarls with the shaken Razorback and moves the Inquisitor's Purifiers toward my big beasties. In shooting he kills six of the top left genestealers and all the Ymgarls. In combat his grenades make both the Tyrgon and Tervigon be -1T, I1, and A1 because of grenades. This lead to the Tervigon dying and the Trygon taking a wound. The Inquisitor Lord had previously perils and died from the Trygon's attack. Crowe charged the Carnifex who killed him, but Crowe removed the
MC with his silly rule that lets him destroy whatever killed him.
Tyranid 3 Without the Tervigon the gants begin to run toward cover. This will bring them across the objects and if my trajectory is correct they will be holding where needed by turn five. The last stealer squad comes in as well as the Tyrant. The Tyrant attempted to deep strike in the open area between the spore and Trygons but scattered eight inches barely clipping enemy models. He rolled a one on the fail chart and died a big fat heroic death. The top left stealers charge the purifiers losing one due to flame and another from combat where they kill two. The other stealers charge across the center exploding a razorback (note the good job Jeff did using the dreadnought to prevent his purifiers from being charged by both stealer squads). The blue Trygon joins the orange one and they eat the Purifier squad. Currently it is 6KP Tyranids and 4KP Grey Knights.
Grey Knights 4 There is less than twenty minutes left and we agree that this will be the last turn. Jeff disembarks the Techmarine squad and uses their Rhino to block the Trygon as they go to an objective. They also kill the Spore. Shooting finishes off the Genestealers who exploded the Razorback and in combat the small squad of Purifiers finishes off the top left squad of stealers. He also claims the one objective on the right and covers another with a Dreadnought to prevent me from getting it.
Tyranids 4 He currently has two objectives to my one and is up on kill points by only one. It is here that I am thankful for the amount of saves I passed on the Trygons. I begin making Instinctive behavior tests. The Gants fail and move toward cover. All of their lurk runs were less than three inches, thus the lack of noticeable movement. I take the Trygon's tests and they both pass. One moves toward the Dreadnought and they other shifts to the Rhino. The Genestealers cover two objectives but stay away from the librarian. The blue Trygon gets six penetrating hits and makes the Dreadnought look silly (IE dead). If the other Trygon can destroy the Rhino I win the game. I roll and due to it's moving 12" I get zero hits. I re-roll for Scything talons and get one hit. It penetrates. Moment of truth...immobilized. Jeff and I shake hands after another immensely close game.
As we reach for our score sheets the
TO calls that due to the round starting late due to the issues with not everyone pre-registering an additional 15 minutes has been added, which would give time for one more turn. Jeff and I talk and decide that because we agreed turn four would be our last, and because we both acted differently than we would have if we knew there would be a turn five that we would not continue playing.
We tied primary and secondary and about tertiary Jeff mentions that because my deployment area is a whole half of the table in dawn of war that he has two scoring units in my deployment zone and that he wins on tertiary 8 to 6. I agree and we turn in our ballots. Unfortunately the objective is not based on deployment zone but just 12” from the table edge which means the game ended in a tie rather than a minor loss for me. This doesn’t matter in the long run though as the one point difference in my score would not have changed my standing overall. Also I want to make it clear that I know Jeff did not say that just to win because, A) he is way to good of a guy to do something like that, and B) I also misremembered the objective too.
More to come soon. As this is my first time doing full turn by turn reports it would be great if I could get any feedback on how to improve readability and quality!
Coming Up: Round Two Has More Twin Linked Heavy Flamers Than I Know What To Do With!
Unkown/1500
