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2015/11/11 23:47:22
Subject: 2000 points Tyranid endless swarm vs Chaos titan and friends.
Well going to get my first test game in with my endless swarm list for the ITC. There will be many in process bugs in the pics, but I have months yet before I have to field them for real. A slight adjustment is we will be playing a 2000 point game instead of 1850. I've had a number of suggestions to give some of the hormagaunts biomorphs, so I'm going to use the 150 extra points as AG on one big squad and TS on the other. The 50 remaining points will be handed to my deathleaper lictor, because he looks cool, and because he shouldn't have a huge impact on the games outcome.
Hive fleet physalia swarm:
Mission: Emperors will
Set up: Vanguard strike
As my opponent unpacked his bag of minis and showed me his great looking Plague reaper, I thought, well, he took my advice and brought templates and fliers. However, he forget to bring volume of fire as well. The plague reaper is a huge vehicle that can really lay down the hurt. Helstorm template, and a couple of blasts, plus a ton of solid shot to smack down my little guys. If used right, this tank could really take over the game. He just has to keep it away from the fex. Two fliers also really should overwhelm my limited AA abilities. If he focuses on killing the crone first, he should happily be able to slap me with impunity from on high. My plan will be to move my forces in a large line to cover the center of the board. I should be able to overwhelm the few infantry he has pretty easily. With the overwhelming numbers, and the mucolids putting a lot of pressure on him, I hope he will get distracted from the synapse, and target all the shrouded bugs amidst the ruins. If the fex can catch the big tank, it should chew through those 9 hull points shockingly fast. I'm not familiar with Kugath really, so I think I'll just treat him as any other scary MC, and aim to get some multi combat with weaker units to cause daemonic instability, or get the Dimachaeron in to ID him with his invisibile graspy hands. (They aren't attached yet.)
Deployment: Big tank versus tons of bugs.
Spoiler:
HIs emperors will objective was surrounded by zombies,
the Plague reaper took center stage, aggressively forwards to bring that big helstorm template to bear. As a third unit to protect his flank he put the plague drones. Typhus and the plague marines were in the storm eagle, Kugath and the daemon troops all deep striking.
Hive fleet physallia stretches out in a long line along the diagonal, lictor and spores infiltrate as far as they can, threatening all sides, and hoping deep strikers would come close.
Escape hatch goes as far forwards as I can in the middle.
I set up the bunker pretty conservatively, I wanted to force him to come well into the corner, pin a flyer or deep strikers back against the wall. Dimachaeron goes on top of the building, being a "leaping" MC, he can happily hop down turn one with no penalty.
Turn one: Massive force moves towards massive tank.
Spoiler:
Chaos turn one:
Chaos began the game with planning out how the Plague reaper could do the most damage. Intimidated by the vast number of models, he focused on those that he could potentially instant death first. Torrent template was laid out to cover as many things as possible. Sadly, the swarm was still just a little out of range of the vast template, except for the end. On the left flank away from the emperors will objective, the plague drones rushed forwards to assault the Lictor in the ruins.
Plague reaper opened fire, killing a mucolid who was more out in the open with a lascannon. The other one deflected from a second mucolid by cover. Concentrated heavy bolter fire caused two wounds on that same mucolid through volume of fire. The pus cannon manages to kill a couple of gribblies, but fails to wound the carnifex, its primary target.
Back to the plague drones, they chuck their death heads at the lictor and entirely miss. They charge in, the Lictor's limbs flash out faster then the eye can see and the first of the three beetle riding nurgle dudes. The other two fail to get a wound through on the lictor, but survive their demonic instability.
The emperors will objective is still surrounded by zombies.
Tyranids turn one:
The swarm expands quickly, running in a massive line. Then toxin sack hormagaunts heading towards the plague drones to help the lictor out. My thought is that from there they can control that corner of the board, if chaos drops in his nurgle daemons anywhere near this side, then I should be able to get in on them. On the other side, the adrenal gland gaunts are making for the zombies, after popping out of the escape hatch midfield. I'm planning on overwhelming the zombies with a volume of attacks.
Carnifex moves along the ruins, continuing to approach the super heavy tank while maintaining cover and within the malanthropes shrouded bubble. The hive crone hugs my opponents side in an attempt to dissuade him from spending two turns attacking it and then flying across the board. Hopefully that will give me a chance to shoot and vector strike his big flyer, creating an off chance that I can ground it. (Not all that likely.)
After all the movement, everything runs! Goes really fast, man these gaunts can move. The squad with the prime in it is the slowest of the movers, and even he seems to be galloping forwards.
Turn two: The daemons arrive!
Spoiler:
Chaos turn two:
My all powerful warlord trait was the opponent suffers -1 reserve rolls. Lo and behold! All of his reserves come in anyway, except for the heldrake who rolls a 1. Another case of useless warlord trait. Speaking of the reserves. All three deep striking daemon units decide to pop in right by my objective. At this point I realized that I did not expect such a thing to happen. I'm not sure what I thought his plan would be for getting to the objective aside from his flier dropping off plague marines.
Speaking of the storm eagle, it comes zipping in and lines up to fire at the malanthrope in the center of my forces. I was waiting for some kind of psychic shenanigan to remove my cover, but no such thing. Instead he just sends off a pair of krak missile equivalents, a couple of blasts, and an auto cannon. With his 2+ cover save from the ruins my malanthrope suffers only a single wound from the deluge of fire power.
Plague reaper shifts around a little, getting itself into a position to cause the most damage with its torrent. Once again the las cannons pop a mucolid with instant death, while hails of heavy bolter fire take out a second one. Blasts and torrent removes about a dozen gants and gaunts, still no full units though.
Assault phase involves the lictor and the plague reapers flailing at each other with only a single wound caused on each side. Tie combat.
Tyranids turn two:
Well that's a change of focus if ever I had one. A couple of mucolids and the warrior squad come in from reserve. Mucolids drop in, between the zombies and the plague reaper, hoping I'll get to attack one of them eventually. My AG hormagaunts continue towards the zombies. Hive crone lines up on the flier, carnifex charges through the ruins towards the slightly too close plague reaper. TS hormagaunts prepare to charge the plague drones. All the termagants and the malanthrope in the center of the board move towards the objective, with so few things over here to hit and all the deep strikers in, the goal now is to take the objective and swamp it with bodies. The small hormagaunt squad moves towards the daemons, prime splits off and joins the warriors inside the bunker. Dima and the flank malanthrope close in with a squad of termagants in support to take on the encroaching daemons.
The termagaunts manage a couple of wounds on the plague bearers, as do the warriors. The hive crone fires off a pair of haywire shots and manages one hull point off the storm eagle. Next turn he should have trouble moving somewhere decent without getting vector struck.
Assault phase the hormagaunts make it in against the nurglings and Kugath. My hope is that I can cause enough wounds on the nurglings that I will be able to get some daemonic instability against Kugath. If not, at least they will tie them up. I managed to kill one base, and survive the return attacks of the nurglings, then lost four gaunts to the great unclean one. Tie combat, but at least the big guy is trapped.
On the other side of the board, my TS hormagaunts made it into combat with the plague drones. Lictor causes a wound, and then the first half of the hormagaunts drown the beetle bound boys.
The really important combat comes next, hammer of wrath from the carnifex causes three penetrating hits (str 10, ap 2) and I manage to rip off 6 hull points before he even swings. At this point the nurglings on the plague reaper would wreak their havoc, however the armored carapace reduces their strength from 3 to 2, so they can't hurt the stone wrecker. Three attacks to follow, and I only land one, and it's a glance. Doh. Lord of war is still alive, but seven hull points is nothing to scoff at.
Turn three: Tyranids counter attack
Spoiler:
Chaos turn three:
Another chance for my warlord trait to do something, instead the heldrake rolls a 6 and comes zipping in. It vector strikes the hive crone and I'm lucky it's only once. A wound, fall and bam the crone is down two wounds and on the ground.
Having survived the carnifex attacks once, the plague reaper wanted none of that! Full reverse and it backs up 12 inches, every gun on the thing is needed to train on the carnifex to shoot it to pieces. A wound from the demolisher cannon, one from a las cannon, one more out of the nine heavy bolters, finally the pintle mounted bolter manages a wound, and I roll a 1. Dead fex.
The storm eagle flew forwards behind the dimachaeron and elected not to go into skimmer mode for assaulting. Once again fire power is unleashed and manages three wounds on the MC, but just can't remove a model well.
The heldrake drops its template eating four out of five devourer termagants below.
During the psychic phase Kugath had used his -d3 ws and initiative psychic power. He got a -3 allowing all of his guys to punch my hormagaunts first...They did not survive to try a hit.
Tyranid turn three:
This was to be the big turn. I was going to throw my AG hormagaunts against his zombies, while the lictor and a couple of spore bombs/mucolids tried to blow up the big tank. That was not enough, so I thought I would ad the hive crone to the lord of war battle as well. If things go well I'll only have the two fliers left to deal with. The trygon came burrowing in this turn, throwing some spines at the zombies and providing the synapse that allowed me to control both gaunts and hive crone. One mucolid has the chance to assault the heldrake.
The daemons get assaulted by the warriors and prime, pulling them all into the same assault. I gave up the extra attacks and furious charge for the prime, but gain the immense number of wounds that should be caused spreading to each unit. The dimachaeron, malanthrope and the termagants also assault. I had forgotten about the psychic power that kugath had used the turn before, which allowed him to punch before everyone else. (Prime caused three wounds on the nurglings, but none of them instant death.) All six attacks went at the dimachaeron, and he only landed two, one of which didn't wound The dimachaeron turned around and using his instant death choppy talons, he killed the greater daemon four times over. (Five unsaved ID wounds.)
The rest of the nids piled on in and managed to kill off two more nurgling bases and a pair of plague bearers. Daemonic instability brought them down to a single plague bearer, and a nurgling with one wound left.
In the table center the hive crone, a mucolid, three spore mines and a lictor charged. I only needed to strip off one hull point as the Crones last two haywire shots stripped off one more as it charged in. At initiative 10 the mucolid and spore mines blew, the mucolid did nothing, the spore mines rolled a 6 and glanced the rear armor. The explosion scattered directly away from anyone they could possibly damage. However the nurglings on the plague reaper get to punch you even if the tank blows up. Well the lictor went down in a flurry of nurgling punches, while the hive crone took two wounds, but survived with one left.
At the chaos objective, the adrenal gland hormagaunts also charged, and the first half of dice rolled chopped all but one of them to pieces.
With both objectives claimed, or about to be claimed by the tyranids, only the two fliers and typhus with plague marines left over, my opponent conceded.
Turn four: They came, they saw...
Spoiler:
Game ended.
Turn five: They conquered.
Spoiler:
Game ended.
Final thoughts:
Spoiler:
This was a good feeling out game for my tyranids. I made a couple of mistakes, but had the speed and numbers to recover and just swamp the whole board.
Deployment:
I really didn't need to put anything near the plague drones, there wasn't much that they were going to be able to do on that side of the board. Putting the lictor in harms way like that worked out fine, but there was every chance that the obscene number of attacks the three drones had could have killed him. Instead I could have placed him in the chaos corner and moved him through the ruins to assault the big tank from behind.
Turn one:
I abandoned my objective and I really didn't need to. Their were only a couple of units on his side of the board that my swarms could even hurt. All the termagants could have been retained, but at least one squad of them could have been surrounding the objective. This would have jacked up the danger of deep striking back there and moved his forces into a more untenable position. The hive crone also was a poor choice to send towards his end. I could use him well along my board edge instead, haywire at the big tank, and eventually vector strike his fliers when they came in. By moving center board quickly, I just guaranteed the vector strike.
Turn two:
I think I played the second turn pretty well, getting the assault off on the big tank, it would have been nice to have something else join him. Either the crone, or shots from the crone, the lictor. Even spore mines?
My response to the daemon incursion I think was pretty good, although I should have targeted the plague bearers instead of the nurglings. Less chance of wounds coming back, although it was the big guy that did most of the work.
Turn three :
At this point I was confident in the game and aside from having no answer for the fliers really, I was pretty sure I had the game in hand. If it had continued he would have had to drop typhus and the storm eagle to the ground, and I could have eaten both at that point. I had preferred enemy from the home objective malanthrope at this point as well.
Timing:
It took three hours to do three turns: I'm okay with that for the moment as I was learning the army, my transportation and layout system was not set up in any way, and it was something of a learning game. I'm sure my time will come down as I get used to the army.
This message was edited 11 times. Last update was at 2015/11/17 17:05:59
~seapheonix
2015/11/16 06:39:37
Subject: 2000 points Tyranid endless swarm vs Chaos titan and friends.
