It is coming down to the wire. The BAOGT is just around the corner (this weekend) and I haven't finalized which army to take there. It's come down to 2 candidates - either my Hive Fleet Pandora that I've been practicing with so much lately or my tournament-winning wraithwing Necrons. I'm sure we will be seeing a lot of necrons at the BAO. As for tyranids, probably not as much. Unfortunately, Janthkin from my area won't be playing at the BAO this year so we will be missing 1 great tyranid player. However, maybe another young jedi can represent. Or he may bring the army which he feels may have the better chance to win it all - his hybrid wraithwing tesla-spam scythe-crons.
In any case, here is your chance to influence my decision on which to bring to the tournament.
Thoughts: Tyranids are really good in 6th Edition. It is no longer a secret how strong they can be (though many people will continue to under-estimate them). The army is not as balanced as my necrons (less mobility, shooting not as good), but the psychic powers make up for a lot of their shortcomings. However, what powers they get are more likely to influence the game. Get the right powers and they are near unstoppable. Get the wrong ones and it will be an uphill battle. This army is more at the mercy of the dice than the crons. However, they are an underdog army and many people would like to see an underdog army try to take it.
Thoughts: My necrons definitely has the ability to win tournaments. It was my 1500 version of this army which took it all at 6th Edition's very first Grand Tournament:
Necrons are almost the perfect tournament army. A marriage of good assault (wraiths, MSS Destroyer Lords), good shooting (tesla destructor-spam), awesome mobility (night scythes, need I say more?) and excellent resiliency, necrons are one of the most balanced armies currently. They do have a couple of bad matchups (with tyranids ironically being one of them) but then again, there is no such thing as a perfect army. The crons are probably as close as it gets. If I really want to win it all, I think my necrons have a better chance because they aren't as matchup dependent (and psychic dependent) as my bugs are.
Shooting:B- My bugs have some decent shooting. Flyrants have essentially a 42" range with 12 TL-S6 shots each. Biovores can mow down infantry from 48" without the need for LOS. Hive guards are my main source for anti-tank. Although they don't need LOS to shoot, their 24" range is somewhat limited, especially against armies with some reach. And then I have gants for volume. My main weakness here is anti-tank shooting, of which I would have to rely on the hive guards and flyrants, anti-flyer shooting and anti-TEQ (terminator equivalent) units with 2+ saves.
Assault:A- This list has decent assault with 4 resilient monstrous creatures and a volume of attack. It is not the most assaulty - there are many other builds that are more assaulty - however, tyranids have excellent anti-assault units as well. You don't necessarily have to have excellent assault units to dominate the Assault phase. You can also do it with what I call anti-assault units. This include lots of lots of gants to act as screens and to tie up enemy units and Iron Armed/FNPMC's to tarpit them as well. Yes, the bugs have a good mix of assault and anti-assault units to deal with all but the most extreme armies.
Mobility:B While the main army is relatively slow, I've got a few mobile elements that make this army slightly better than my previous incarnations. Dual flyrants will present a major problem to many enemies and they have the mobility to catch even the fast armies. A drop podding Doom of Ma'lantai will give me a good chance for Linebreaker as well as get to those hard-to-reach units. Gargoyles can move and lastly, tervigon-spawned termagants can surprise a few people when they shoot out of their mothers. Mobility in this army isn't as bad as it used to be with tyranids.
Resiliency:A Tyranids if anything are really tough. Psychic powers and flying MC's really add to their resiliency. Iron Arm is a game-changer against many armies. Endurance is probably just as important against the majority of the armies out there. Flying MC's make the flyrants viable once more. Also, now it is much easier for monstrous creatures to get cover (even if cover is slightly reduced). As for scoring units, gants may be easy to kill, but due to tervigons being able to spawn gants, scoring is actually one of the strong characteristics of a tyranid army. Overall, tyranids are one of the most durable armies in the game. There is lots of redudancy and lots of units in the army to make them highly resilient.
Intangibles:B+ I'll start off with the most noticeable intangibles - psychic nids. Psychic powers have improved a lot in 6th Edition and tyranids are probably the army that best take advantage of them. There's really 3 powers that tyranids will ever really need - Iron Arm, Endurance and Enfeeble - and bugs can spam these powers. With their psychic powers, bugs can now compete with armies that they couldn't before in 5th. Iron Arm makes grey knight force weapons much less scary and even gives them a chance against missile launchers which would kill them before. Endurance works across the board and against any and all armies, especially against armies such as dark eldar venom-spam which would have otherwise devastate the bugs back in 5th. Enfeeble lets the bugs deal with scary enemy deathstars such as wraiths, paladins, nob bikers, TWC and other such units. It is also a force-multiplying power that lets tyranid focus-fire destroy enemy units much in the same way as Guide/Doom did for eldar. Even though 2 armies can shut down their powers - eldar and space wolves - but at least they still have a chance to cast them whereas before in 5th, they didn't have any of those powers.
Tyranids will also have the element of surprise. Many people still do not realize how good tyranids can be. The majority of the "hype" on the net is that tyranids are still a bad or at most a mid-tier army. I suspect that many people may be surprised when they play against a good tyranid player for the first time. Under-estimating one's opponent may be enough to get bugs deeper into the tournament until they face the top players with truly balanced lists.
Problem Matchups: Tyranids are not as balanced as some of the other armies (like my necrons). This, combined with the inherent nature of the army, means that they are more likely to encounter problematic matchups in tournament play. Armies that ignore high toughness units will give them some trouble. Such armies include Dark Eldar and other tyranids. And although the bugs are really tough, they will still have problems against ultra-shooty armies such as Tau, shooty MSU-builds, dark eldar, missile-wolves, grey knights and even obliterator CSM. Due to the inherent nature of the foundation of the army - tervigons - they are susceptible to armies such as space wolves Rune Priest-spam. Lastly, the bugs don't have the guns to deal with flyers. A flyer-heavy army may give it some problems - Necron Airforce, triple vendettas, triple heldrakes and even triple storm talons.
NECRONS:
Spoiler:
Shooting:B+ Tesla-destructors are arguably the best guns in the necron army, and a necron army that spams them may perhaps be one of the best necron builds in terms of shooting. Tesla-destructors are good against tanks, infantry and flyers. As a matter of fact, tesla-destructors are arguably the best anti-air weaponry. Even snap-shots don't slow it down in terms of damage output. The only problematic builds for teslas are heavy armor (AV 13-14), T8/9 monstrous creatures, pure hordes and massed 2+ save units. But in terms of all-around firepower, teslas are one of the best in the business with good accuracy and good damage output. For heavy armor, of course I've got 1 doom scythe to fill the niche. The only reason why necrons don't get an A is because of the 2 deathstars, who take away from their very good shooting.
Assault:B+ Necrons are not a pure assault army, but wraiths with attached Destroyer Lords are very good. They have the resiliency to deal with all but the most potent assault units (i.e. deathstars), the offense to defeat most units and Mindshackle Scarabs to deal with uber characters and dangerous monstrous creatures. More important than their martial prowess is their excellent mobility. The "threat" of their assault due to their mobility is a great tool they will utilize to control the board. Basically, it is this threat combined with with excellent mobility that forms the foundation for my philosophy of Positional Dominance.
Another more subtle characteristic of a hybrid wraithwing is this: they are a very good "anti-assault" army as well. In the assault phase, it's not necessarily who has the best assault units who is the superior army in assault. Rather, just as important is an army that can render enemy assault units ineffective. What good is an assault unit when it is bogged down by cheap tarpit units or can't get through cheap screening units or has nothing to assault? This is just as important a principle as being a good assault army. You cannot assault the necron troops because they are in flyer transports. Assault armies really have nothing to assault other than the very dangerous wraithstars themselves and the 2 annihilation barges. Necrons are good in assault because they have good hitting power while at the same time, leave little for the enemy to assault in return besides their 2 deathstars.
Mobility:A+ When it comes to mobility, necrons set the standard. There are maybe only 1 or 2 other armies that are as fast as the crons, and none have the advantage of necron night scythes. Honestly, I win about as much, maybe even more of my games in the Movement phase than in the Shooting or Assault phase. I call necrons the Masters of the Movement phase and that is really the secret to their success in many of my games. It is also because of their mobility which is why I consider them one of the best armies currently.
Resiliency:A+ Necrons are just so damn tough and durable it is silly sometimes. Wraiths with a Destroyer Lord are a really sturdy unit and I've got 2 of them. ResOrbs on those D-lords are potentially game changing. Those pieces of wargears have literally won me games that I should have otherwise lost had my D-lord not come back from the dead. Then you've got AV13 skimmers, the annihilation barges, who will almost always be getting cover. Finally, you've got the hard-to-kill flyers. There is no weak targets and no easy First Blood units, and there are some major redundancy in this army. This army is ultra-durable.
Intangibles:A People who have never played against necrons before do not realize how tough and fast this army really is. And even those that have played against them oftentimes can't really do anything about it. The crons can absorb an astonishing amount of firepower and still deliver a devastating alpha-strike when their flyers come in (as long as the general plays his army with a little caution at first). And even if you wipe out those wraiths and think that you've got them on the ropes, they can still win it with their mobility. Yes, there has been numerous games where my wraiths were getting absolutely hammered and I still win the game easily. There are fast armies and then there are tough armies. The crons are so hard to play against because they are both a very fast and a very tough army.
Problem Matchups: No army is perfect. Every army has a weakness. The less balanced ones have more. The more balanced ones have less. Because the crons are good in all 3 phases of the game - Movement, Shooting and Assault - they have fewer weaknesses than most. Yet, these weaknesses do exist. The lack of low-AP weaponry and power weapons means that they will have trouble against the more durable armies - 2+ save units, T5 units and FNP units. They will have problems against armies that have cheap tarpitting units like CSM zombies, massed ork boys, IG blob squads and tervigon-spawned termagants. The lack of any psychic defense means that they are susceptible to psychic heavy armies such as eldar, tyranids, space marines with Null Zone and space wolves with Jaws. Finally, armies with good anti-air firepower, especially some of the new Forgeworld units and another necron army, will give them problems if they can shoot down their flyers early.
Hey Jy2. In all the time I have been on Dakka, (A few months short of 2 years) and on Warseer, which I was on for about a year before that, you consistently have shone out as producing as excellent battle reports, and I have always enjoyed reading. I especially like seeing you play Tyranids, as I think you are a skilled player, and I enjoy seeing nids pull out victories more. If you think that you can play powerfully in 6th with Tyranids, I say go for it. You will have a more unique army and I would enjoy the reports more, because it is likely that they will be games. So I would suggest nids, (as the 2 other people who have voted so far have). Thanks!
I've always had a soft spot in my cold, metallic heart for Necrons, so I voted that way, but play whatever you think will be more fun for you! You seem to have been favoring Hive Fleet Pandora lately, so if that's what you're having fun with, go for it!
Im going for Nids, you know the necrons can win but id be up for the challange of winning with nids, they are a strong tournie army now, maybe not as much as necrons but still strong!
Hey Jy2 I love your battle reports they are really detailed, the pictures are great, and the general play you have over your army is astounding. After consideration , I voted Nids because everyone will be running necs in some kind of wraith spam/ flyer spam fashion and to an extent I really believe you'll challenge yourself more in taking nids to combat them. It's always nice to be win but uniqueness counts as well. Nids aren't too common and for them to show up at a GT would really suprise som people and even possibly bring them back to the tournament scene, especially if you can win a majority of your matches with them. Finally, the tactical play style is much harder than your necs which have a common theme of waiting for your flyers then charging with everything afterwards; with your nids dependant on the army you do have to change up your strategy and that is why I've found your Nid battlereports to be more entertaining than your Necron battlereports Your veteran experience with your Nids should take you far and I believe when you go to this kind of tournament (not that I have been to a GT) you should enjoy the army your playing and not get bored of them especially since you'll be playing 6-7 games. I believe with your necrons you'll get bored of fighting necrons/ bored of the same general playstyle and even if you win the enjoyment is not as great as it would be had you really really worked for it with your Nids.
Good Luck otherwise no matter which army you choose.
I think Necrons will give you the best chance of victory, but I really enjoy your tyranid reports and would love to see more! Voted for hive fleet pandora.
Love all if your reports jy2 whatever you bring can't wait to read about it. However as a nids player myself I hope you take them because I think you are the best general I have seen online with the bugs. Good luck with the Bao regardless of your choice
I will be attending the BAO as well and I honestly would be more afraid of your Nids then your Necrons. Despite this I would rather go against your Nids because they are a lot more fun to play against. Hope to meet you there!
First off, thanks for all the comments so far. I will go back and respond to them a little later.
Ok, here is my analysis of the 2 armies. I will start with my bugs first. I will use a grading system with C being average.
ARMY ANALYSIS:
TYRANIDS:
Shooting:B- My bugs have some decent shooting. Flyrants have essentially a 42" range with 12 TL-S6 shots each. Biovores can mow down infantry from 48" without the need for LOS. Hive guards are my main source for anti-tank. Although they don't need LOS to shoot, their 24" range is somewhat limited, especially against armies with some reach. And then I have gants for volume. My main weakness here is anti-tank shooting, of which I would have to rely on the hive guards and flyrants, anti-flyer shooting and anti-TEQ (terminator equivalent) units with 2+ saves.
Assault:A- This list has decent assault with 4 resilient monstrous creatures and a volume of attack. It is not the most assaulty - there are many other builds that are more assaulty - however, tyranids have excellent anti-assault units as well. You don't necessarily have to have excellent assault units to dominate the Assault phase. You can also do it with what I call anti-assault units. This include lots of lots of gants to act as screens and to tie up enemy units and Iron Armed/FNPMC's to tarpit them as well. Yes, the bugs have a good mix of assault and anti-assault units to deal with all but the most extreme armies.
Mobility:B While the main army is relatively slow, I've got a few mobile elements that make this army slightly better than my previous incarnations. Dual flyrants will present a major problem to many enemies and they have the mobility to catch even the fast armies. A drop podding Doom of Ma'lantai will give me a good chance for Linebreaker as well as get to those hard-to-reach units. Gargoyles can move and lastly, tervigon-spawned termagants can surprise a few people when they shoot out of their mothers. Mobility in this army isn't as bad as it used to be with tyranids.
Resiliency:A Tyranids if anything are really tough. Psychic powers and flying MC's really add to their resiliency. Iron Arm is a game-changer against many armies. Endurance is probably just as important against the majority of the armies out there. Flying MC's make the flyrants viable once more. Also, now it is much easier for monstrous creatures to get cover (even if cover is slightly reduced). As for scoring units, gants may be easy to kill, but due to tervigons being able to spawn gants, scoring is actually one of the strong characteristics of a tyranid army. Overall, tyranids are one of the most durable armies in the game. There is lots of redudancy and lots of units in the army to make them highly resilient.
Intangibles:B+ I'll start off with the most noticeable intangibles - psychic nids. Psychic powers have improved a lot in 6th Edition and tyranids are probably the army that best take advantage of them. There's really 3 powers that tyranids will ever really need - Iron Arm, Endurance and Enfeeble - and bugs can spam these powers. With their psychic powers, bugs can now compete with armies that they couldn't before in 5th. Iron Arm makes grey knight force weapons much less scary and even gives them a chance against missile launchers which would kill them before. Endurance works across the board and against any and all armies, especially against armies such as dark eldar venom-spam which would have otherwise devastate the bugs back in 5th. Enfeeble lets the bugs deal with scary enemy deathstars such as wraiths, paladins, nob bikers, TWC and other such units. It is also a force-multiplying power that lets tyranid focus-fire destroy enemy units much in the same way as Guide/Doom did for eldar. Even though 2 armies can shut down their powers - eldar and space wolves - but at least they still have a chance to cast them whereas before in 5th, they didn't have any of those powers.
Tyranids will also have the element of surprise. Many people still do not realize how good tyranids can be. The majority of the "hype" on the net is that tyranids are still a bad or at most a mid-tier army. I suspect that many people may be surprised when they play against a good tyranid player for the first time. Under-estimating one's opponent may be enough to get bugs deeper into the tournament until they face the top players with truly balanced lists.
Problem Matchups: Tyranids are not as balanced as some of the other armies (like my necrons). This, combined with the inherent nature of the army, means that they are more likely to encounter problematic matchups in tournament play. Armies that ignore high toughness units will give them some trouble. Such armies include Dark Eldar and other tyranids. And although the bugs are really tough, they will still have problems against ultra-shooty armies such as Tau, shooty MSU-builds, dark eldar, missile-wolves, grey knights and even obliterator CSM. Due to the inherent nature of the foundation of the army - tervigons - they are susceptible to armies such as space wolves Rune Priest-spam. Lastly, the bugs don't have the guns to deal with flyers. A flyer-heavy army may give it some problems - Necron Airforce, triple vendettas, triple heldrakes and even triple storm talons.
Shooting:B+ Tesla-destructors are arguably the best guns in the necron army, and a necron army that spams them may perhaps be one of the best necron builds in terms of shooting. Tesla-destructors are good against tanks, infantry and flyers. As a matter of fact, tesla-destructors are arguably the best anti-air weaponry. Even snap-shots don't slow it down in terms of damage output. The only problematic builds for teslas are heavy armor (AV 13-14), T8/9 monstrous creatures, pure hordes and massed 2+ save units. But in terms of all-around firepower, teslas are one of the best in the business with good accuracy and good damage output. For heavy armor, of course I've got 1 doom scythe to fill the niche. The only reason why necrons don't get an A is because of the 2 deathstars, who take away from their very good shooting.
Assault:B+ Necrons are not a pure assault army, but wraiths with attached Destroyer Lords are very good. They have the resiliency to deal with all but the most potent assault units (i.e. deathstars), the offense to defeat most units and Mindshackle Scarabs to deal with uber characters and dangerous monstrous creatures. More important than their martial prowess is their excellent mobility. The "threat" of their assault due to their mobility is a great tool they will utilize to control the board. Basically, it is this threat combined with with excellent mobility that forms the foundation for my philosophy of Positional Dominance.
Another more subtle characteristic of a hybrid wraithwing is this: they are a very good "anti-assault" army as well. In the assault phase, it's not necessarily who has the best assault units who is the superior army in assault. Rather, just as important is an army that can render enemy assault units ineffective. What good is an assault unit when it is bogged down by cheap tarpit units or can't get through cheap screening units or has nothing to assault? This is just as important a principle as being a good assault army. You cannot assault the necron troops because they are in flyer transports. Assault armies really have nothing to assault other than the very dangerous wraithstars themselves and the 2 annihilation barges. Necrons are good in assault because they have good hitting power while at the same time, leave little for the enemy to assault in return besides their 2 deathstars.
Mobility:A+ When it comes to mobility, necrons set the standard. There are maybe only 1 or 2 other armies that are as fast as the crons, and none have the advantage of necron night scythes. Honestly, I win about as much, maybe even more of my games in the Movement phase than in the Shooting or Assault phase. I call necrons the Masters of the Movement phase and that is really the secret to their success in many of my games. It is also because of their mobility which is why I consider them one of the best armies currently.
Resiliency:A+ Necrons are just so damn tough and durable it is silly sometimes. Wraiths with a Destroyer Lord are a really sturdy unit and I've got 2 of them. ResOrbs on those D-lords are potentially game changing. Those pieces of wargears have literally won me games that I should have otherwise lost had my D-lord not come back from the dead. Then you've got AV13 skimmers, the annihilation barges, who will almost always be getting cover. Finally, you've got the hard-to-kill flyers. There is no weak targets and no easy First Blood units, and there are some major redundancy in this army. This army is ultra-durable.
Intangibles:A People who have never played against necrons before do not realize how tough and fast this army really is. And even those that have played against them oftentimes can't really do anything about it. The crons can absorb an astonishing amount of firepower and still deliver a devastating alpha-strike when their flyers come in (as long as the general plays his army with a little caution at first). And even if you wipe out those wraiths and think that you've got them on the ropes, they can still win it with their mobility. Yes, there has been numerous games where my wraiths were getting absolutely hammered and I still win the game easily. There are fast armies and then there are tough armies. The crons are so hard to play against because they are both a very fast and a very tough army.
Problem Matchups: No army is perfect. Every army has a weakness. The less balanced ones have more. The more balanced ones have less. Because the crons are good in all 3 phases of the game - Movement, Shooting and Assault - they have fewer weaknesses than most. Yet, these weaknesses do exist. The lack of low-AP weaponry and power weapons means that they will have trouble against the more durable armies - 2+ save units, T5 units and FNP units. They will have problems against armies that have cheap tarpitting units like CSM zombies, massed ork boys, IG blob squads and tervigon-spawned termagants. The lack of any psychic defense means that they are susceptible to psychic heavy armies such as eldar, tyranids, space marines with Null Zone and space wolves with Jaws. Finally, armies with good anti-air firepower, especially some of the new Forgeworld units and another necron army, will give them problems if they can shoot down their flyers early.
Gotta go with Nids. You already won a GT with Crons, doing it with a "bad army" would seal the deal. Seriously, I don't know why Nis are though of as weak. But because I'm taking Nids to a GT next month, I must vote the same way! Good luck to you.
Tyranids. I mean no offence to Dakka's resident Necron players when I say this...but I'm sick of seeing Necrons win at everything (especially when they Wraith and Scythe their way to victory).
I voted Nids but I would personally tweak the list a bit. I love Gargs - do not get me wrong but I would rather have devilgaunts in 6ed and use at least one more pod. Are you rolling biomancy on your Doom? It is a gamble but when it pays ... Are you rolling on your Zoans?
Valek wrote: I vote Necrons altough, the time for pure lists has stopped in my opinion.
Nids are very very good, but I think recent errata's on Helldrakes and Vector strike will do a lot to take out the big guys.
I voted 'crons for the heldrake factor. Given all their hype lately, they could be out in force. I think the 'nids will struggle to even have a fun game, let alone win, against an army that spams them.
That said, I think the 'nids could fare quite well if there are LOTS of necrons and you roll the right psychic powers.
jy2 wrote: Problem Matchups:
Tyranids are not as balanced as some of the other armies (like my necrons). This, combined with the inherent nature of the army, means that they are more likely to encounter problematic matchups in tournament play. Armies that ignore high toughness units will give them some trouble. Such armies include Dark Eldar and other tyranids. And although the bugs are really tough, they will still have problems against ultra-shooty armies such as Tau, shooty MSU-builds, dark eldar, missile-wolves, grey knights and even obliterator CSM. Due to the inherent nature of the foundation of the army - tervigons - they are susceptible to armies such as space wolves Rune Priest-spam. Lastly, the bugs don't have the guns to deal with flyers. A flyer-heavy army may give it some problems - Necron Airforce, triple vendettas, triple heldrakes and even triple storm talons.
Add in Eldar because they should all be taking runes.
I would say Nids, the necrons will be a auto win button in quite a few games as you know how to play them, give yourself a challenge bud.
Most importantly, imo, its the army you will have the most fun playing, both are top tier if used correctly so for me it would boil down to what I like playing with, I love psykers personaly and do like the extra level they add!
Thanks for all the comments so far. The army I was leaning more towards were my bugs and it seems like that will be the right choice according to my fellow dakkalites anyways. Now to get crackin' on finishing up my bugs (which, BTW, I've been doing anyways. )
Scottiebhoy wrote: Im going for Nids, you know the necrons can win but id be up for the challange of winning with nids, they are a strong tournie army now, maybe not as much as necrons but still strong!
Yeah, that is one of the stronger motivations for bringing my bugs. I will have fun no matter which army I bring, but I think tyranids will give me the bigger challenge. Besides, I've already done it with my crons (competed successfully with them). Time to give another army a chance.
SabrX wrote: You know me. I say roll a D2 and let the dice gods decide! Just remember to sacrifice a lot of kittens before you do. Those gods are fickle.
Hulksmash wrote: Take both and flip a coin the morning of. Some of us do that for things like Adepticon and other midwest events
Very interesting way to pick an army.
Maybe if I had as much confidence as Hulksmash, I'd do that. Ha, ha...j.k.
Yeah, it's practically decided what I'm going to bring. No need for the coin flip, although I may just bring 2 armies anyways in case there is time to play some games for fun.
y0disisray wrote: I will be attending the BAO as well and I honestly would be more afraid of your Nids then your Necrons. Despite this I would rather go against your Nids because they are a lot more fun to play against.
Well, come up and say "Hi". I'd love to put a face to the dakka name.
Actually, one of my perspectives for my battle report to is to get a little more personal. These are not just names that I am playing against, they are actual people. I'd like to take pictures of the people as well as their armies (assuming they don't mind). This report won't be just about me and my army, it'll be about the entire tournament gaming community (or a rather small portion of it ).
Valek wrote: I vote Necrons altough, the time for pure lists has stopped in my opinion.
Nids are very very good, but I think recent errata's on Helldrakes and Vector strike will do a lot to take out the big guys.
Yeah, triple heldrake-chaos may give me some problems. Triple-any flyers may give my bugs a problem, but I may get a small reprieve if not all of them come in at once.
jifel wrote: Gotta go with Nids. You already won a GT with Crons, doing it with a "bad army" would seal the deal. Seriously, I don't know why Nis are though of as weak. But because I'm taking Nids to a GT next month, I must vote the same way! Good luck to you.
Thanks! Good luck to you as well. Your bug list with triple-tervigons is very scary. I think you will do well with them.
I voted Nids but I would personally tweak the list a bit. I love Gargs - do not get me wrong but I would rather have devilgaunts in 6ed and use at least one more pod. Are you rolling biomancy on your Doom? It is a gamble but when it pays ... Are you rolling on your Zoans?
I won't be bring my devgants for a number of reasons:
1. Dropping the gargoyles will only give me 120pts to play around with. I can't get very many devgants with spore for that.
2. Devgants would require me to re-design my whole list, dropping a lot of support units that I would rather keep. Probably if the tournament was at a higher points levels, I could consider them (nah, I'd probably try to get a 3rd tervigon+gants as my first priority at higher points).
3. I don't actually own any of the devgant models.
The Doom's psychic powers will be more situational. I've been leaning more towards Telepathy for his powers but once in a while, I may try my luck on Biomancy. It'll all depend on what army I will be facing.
And yeah, in most cases I will be rolling for my zoans on Biomancy unless I go up against land raider-spam.
Valek wrote: I vote Necrons altough, the time for pure lists has stopped in my opinion.
Nids are very very good, but I think recent errata's on Helldrakes and Vector strike will do a lot to take out the big guys.
I voted 'crons for the heldrake factor. Given all their hype lately, they could be out in force. I think the 'nids will struggle to even have a fun game, let alone win, against an army that spams them.
That said, I think the 'nids could fare quite well if there are LOTS of necrons and you roll the right psychic powers.
Actually, both armies were designed to be able to handle heldrakes. It is mainly MEQ armies that will have more trouble with them. Nevertheless, heldrakes in numbers will hurt. So will triple-vendettas and triple-any flyers. Oh well....bring it on! This TAC army cares not.
I played in a doubles tournament last weekend with my bother. It was 1850 split (925 each) sharing a FOC. We assumed it would be casual. He took nids, one tervy, flyrant, mawloc only 2 HG... I took SW with no RP and a TWC lord and one unit of GHlol.... I am still laughing at the fact that despite our none optimal lists we placed 2nd and wen undefeated, 2 massacres and a major despite facing flyers and there being FW which none of us \know a thing about.
We faced mechaguard with a vedatta and vulture paired with DA game one and another guard DA duo game two with yet another vulture and an avenger, game three was dual CSM with a helturkey lol!!! Basically my point is that fliers are not necessary to win games (though they do make it tough lol).
By the way flyrant failed first ground check each game and died turn 1 games 1 and 3.... Game 2 he died turn two but he evaded the pesky avangers 6 of 8 wounds and then shot it down somehow lol.
BTW that avenger is less then a helturkey and has 2 auto canons, 2 las canons and a 6 or 7 shot S7 ap3 avenger bolst canon lol.... FW flyers are a bit under costed imo. It will be too soon before I face another vulture.
Good luck! and I hope you take lots of photos! Players too if they are willing
Right now, every general should expect (and prepare) to face Necrons in a tournament. They are currently the "army to beat," and you're either playing with them or against them. Scythewing remains a powerful build despite that fact, because in standard 40k it still has very few hard counters. The inclusion of FW changes things significantly. Players expecting to face Necrons (that is, everybody) now have good options to take apart a Flyer-based army with ease. Not to sell the Dlord/Wraith-stars short, but I think your army will be in a lot of trouble if you come up against anyone who can quickly take out three Night Scythes. Of course that's not going to be every army...it might not even be half, or a quarter, but in a GT one ugly loss can easily take you out of the running.
Nids have the potential to suffer from a bad matchup as well, but you also don't have people specifically building their lists to beat Nids. You will not be so lucky with Crons. As you said, Nids have been hugely underestimated for awhile now. I'm surprised more people haven't caught on. Just as well, since (as you also said), this will only work to your advantage.
Long story short: people are gunning for Necrons at every event, but at BAO they'll really have the tools to do it. If you feel confident in your Tyranids, I feel they will absolutely be a stronger choice.
Well, I wouldn't be too worried about FW units since they are rather expensive for what you get. Recently, I faced a FW Dread in a GK army vs my Wraithwing in an RTT. Scary stats but not so scary at the battle field.
Was it a Contemptor? Those gave my Necrons fits...Av13 with two TL/Intercepting/Skyfiring-Lascannons. Yeesh. I think there's an Assault Cannon option that is also pretty spooky-scary. Anyway, I'd be more worried about Guard Blobs and Sabre Defense Platforms.
whigwam wrote: Was it a Contemptor? Those gave my Necrons fits...Av13 with two TL/Intercepting/Skyfiring-Lascannons. Yeesh. I think there's an Assault Cannon option that is also pretty spooky-scary. Anyway, I'd be more worried about Guard Blobs and Sabre Defense Platforms.
Yeah, it was a Contemptor with an assault cannon. Short ranged and so rather easy to avoid with Scythes. At the end, dead by stripping off hull points via tesla. As far as I remember AV 13 at the front, but AV 12 on the sides.
whigwam wrote: Was it a Contemptor? Those gave my Necrons fits...Av13 with two TL/Intercepting/Skyfiring-Lascannons. Yeesh. I think there's an Assault Cannon option that is also pretty spooky-scary. Anyway, I'd be more worried about Guard Blobs and Sabre Defense Platforms.
Yeah, it was a Contemptor with an assault cannon. Short ranged and so rather easy to avoid with Scythes. At the end, dead by stripping off hull points via tesla. As far as I remember AV 13 at the front, but AV 12 on the sides.
Yeah, for Crons the AssCantemptor is a lot more manageable than the LasCantemptor... I played against two of the latter at a recent tourney and it was very ugly. If your opponent places them well, you'll need two turns to get a side armor shot (good luck making it there)...and that's only if you're sending Scythes in opposite directions and neither gets shot down (since the damn things will just turn to face you if you're coming from one direction). Even those hard-to-get side armor shots are hardly a guarantee since it's still just S7 vs AV12 (and you've got that 5++ to get through!).
I know Contemptors are pricey and they're not that scary to a lot of other armies out there, but they're only one example. That specific scenario and how it may/may not play out isn't really that important. The larger point is that everyone has motivation to deal with Necrons, but very few options with which to do it. FW gives people some pretty good options, and that should give Necron players pause.
Evade + Shrouded + Agile for a 2+ Cover save, BS4, 2 Shuriken Cannons and 2 Bright Lances, Supersonic and Vector Dancer - this with interceptor and skyfire.
Red Corsair wrote: I played in a doubles tournament last weekend with my bother. It was 1850 split (925 each) sharing a FOC. We assumed it would be casual. He took nids, one tervy, flyrant, mawloc only 2 HG... I took SW with no RP and a TWC lord and one unit of GHlol.... I am still laughing at the fact that despite our none optimal lists we placed 2nd and wen undefeated, 2 massacres and a major despite facing flyers and there being FW which none of us \know a thing about.
We faced mechaguard with a vedatta and vulture paired with DA game one and another guard DA duo game two with yet another vulture and an avenger, game three was dual CSM with a helturkey lol!!! Basically my point is that fliers are not necessary to win games (though they do make it tough lol).
By the way flyrant failed first ground check each game and died turn 1 games 1 and 3.... Game 2 he died turn two but he evaded the pesky avangers 6 of 8 wounds and then shot it down somehow lol.
BTW that avenger is less then a helturkey and has 2 auto canons, 2 las canons and a 6 or 7 shot S7 ap3 avenger bolst canon lol.... FW flyers are a bit under costed imo. It will be too soon before I face another vulture.
Good luck! and I hope you take lots of photos! Players too if they are willing
Congrats. You can definitely still win playing against flyers and without using any flyers of your own. I haven't lost many games even to double-heldrakes, triple-vendettas or triple-ravens even with my non-flyer armies.
As to date, the only forgeworld units that I've played against are Mortis Contemptor dreads (in a 2v2, we won) and against a triple-Vulture IG list with my space wolves (l lost). Honestly, I don't think it's anything my armies can't handle but we will see.
whigwam wrote: Right now, every general should expect (and prepare) to face Necrons in a tournament. They are currently the "army to beat," and you're either playing with them or against them. Scythewing remains a powerful build despite that fact, because in standard 40k it still has very few hard counters. The inclusion of FW changes things significantly. Players expecting to face Necrons (that is, everybody) now have good options to take apart a Flyer-based army with ease. Not to sell the Dlord/Wraith-stars short, but I think your army will be in a lot of trouble if you come up against anyone who can quickly take out three Night Scythes. Of course that's not going to be every army...it might not even be half, or a quarter, but in a GT one ugly loss can easily take you out of the running.
Nids have the potential to suffer from a bad matchup as well, but you also don't have people specifically building their lists to beat Nids. You will not be so lucky with Crons. As you said, Nids have been hugely underestimated for awhile now. I'm surprised more people haven't caught on. Just as well, since (as you also said), this will only work to your advantage.
Long story short: people are gunning for Necrons at every event, but at BAO they'll really have the tools to do it. If you feel confident in your Tyranids, I feel they will absolutely be a stronger choice.
Hi whigwam,
I'm excited to be meeting a lot of dakkalite there. Maybe we'll get a game in? Who knows. Have you decided on what you will be taking? You've got some strong armies, whether it be your crons or your daemons.
Yeah, there's going to be a lot of armies gunning for the crons. However, how effective those FW units remains to be seen. Necron resiliency may surprise some....or they may just crash and burn. In any case, with FW there, it's anyone's game. There is no sure thing. But no matter what, it's looking like it's going to be my bugs.
wuestenfux wrote: Well, I wouldn't be too worried about FW units since they are rather expensive for what you get. Recently, I faced a FW Dread in a GK army vs my Wraithwing in an RTT. Scary stats but not so scary at the battle field.
There's going to be people there that will spend the money on those FW so I wouldn't under-estimate them. However, what can you do about it? You just have to keep on keeping on, no matter what you come up against, FW or not. Fortunately, in a balanced TAC list, FW shouldn't be any more scary then, say, heldrakes or vendettas or what-have-you. Just bring it on!
whigwam wrote: Was it a Contemptor? Those gave my Necrons fits...Av13 with two TL/Intercepting/Skyfiring-Lascannons. Yeesh. I think there's an Assault Cannon option that is also pretty spooky-scary. Anyway, I'd be more worried about Guard Blobs and Sabre Defense Platforms.
Necrons shouldn't be too concerned about the contemptors. Heck, I'm not. Their range is just too short (except for the cyclones) and the wraiths will really put the pressure on them.
I'd definitely be more concerned with the blob squad or sabre platforms.
Evade + Shrouded + Agile for a 2+ Cover save, BS4, 2 Shuriken Cannons and 2 Bright Lances, Supersonic and Vector Dancer - this with interceptor and skyfire.
145 points ... and that is hardly overcosted ...
Ouch! Well, you know what I think....just bring it!
If you really want to win the GT I would take your Necrons... They match up well against everything. Tyranids on the other hand are very dependent on their psychic powers which are random... You'll probably start off well but over the course of the tournament there is greater chance when facing another top gamer they could have something that shuts down your psychic powers (e.g., Rune Staff, Farseer, etc.), leaving you in the proverbial learch... Heck, it could even happen on day one.
I'd rate your Tyranid list as B/B- in the assault phase... They are okay but I think you're relying mostly on sheer numbers. Flyrants can be a pushover in close combat if they don't roll the right psychic powers. If you come against army such as a Purifier heavy list they can burninate right through your gants and gargoyles. It seems like the assault phase is not as powerful in sixth edition though so probably this is not as big a factor.
Finally if you take Tyranids this is your prime opportunity to show everyone the money. You can still walk away número uno but its just less likely to happen. You simply have to decide what's most important to you.
Winning is not my top-most priority. I want to win, however, I want to challenge myself also. I think both armies have the potential and ability to win. Tyranids, however, will probably be the more challenging army to play and it seems like most people here can agree on that.
Yeah, if you're talking about pure assault without relying on other factors, then I'd say they are a B/B- at most. However, I also factor in their resiliency in the the Assault phase. You don't necessarily have to be good in assault to be able to handle enemy assault units. Elements such as tarpitting units, screening units, non-assaultable units (i.e. troops in flyers) and ultra-resilient units to me factors into an army's capabilities in the Assault phase. So if you factor in ultra-resilient MC's, tarpitting gribblies and free screening units, the combination of assault and "anti-assault" units is why I give tyranids a higher grade than their actual pure assault capabilities.
I'm excited to be meeting a lot of dakkalite there. Maybe we'll get a game in? Who knows. Have you decided on what you will be taking? You've got some strong armies, whether it be your crons or your daemons.
Well, my Necrons and/or Necrorks are not travel-ready (or fully painted) at the moment, so it's going to be Daemons. Some tweaks from my list at FoB, except now featuring Fiends and a Herald of Nurgle (!!!). I hope we get a game in, but if you're bringing bugs I think I'd be just as happy to miss the opportunity... Tyranids are a really tough matchup for my Daemons, so I will settle for just being able to say hello!
I play Grey Knights with Necron allies and of all the armies I've faced, 'Nids are the one's I've struggled to overcome most.
A skilled player commanding a well built 'Nid army is a formidable opponent. I say since you've already proven yourself as a top Necron general, see if you can take the swarm to victory. I'd love to see all of the haters and doubters eat their words when the Hive Mind claims it's first major 6th ed Tournament win.
Due to the overwhelming support of the viewers and my own own desire to challenge myself, I have decided on which I army I will be bringing....Space Marines!
No, just kidding. It's going to be my bugs - Hive Fleet Pandora. Here is what I can expect from them:
- Tyranids are going to be much more exhausting physically. There is a lot more models to move around and deal with.
- Tyranids are going to be much more exhausting mentally. With necrons, strategy is very easy - just go after the enemy and zoom towards the objectives in the end. Tyranids are much more taxing mentally when it comes to strategy. Yeah, you still basically go after the enemy, but due to their rather limited mobility, you need to take more into consideration the mission objectives and other factors. You also have to be more concerned with matchups than you do with the crons.
- Games will take longer. With necrons, games are relatively faster as most of your units start off in reserves. But with bugs, you will basically start most of your army on the table. And then, bugs fully utilize all 3 phases - Movement, Shooting and Assault. In addition, you have to take time for psychic powers and spawning. Overall, I expect more of my tyranid games to go the distance. It is also because of this why tyranids are more physically exhausting to play. We're not talking about 1 game here. We're talking about 7-8 games.
- It's going to be more challenging with tyranids. Due to their inherent weaknesses, they are more likely to encounter problematic matchups than the crons. Thus, they are more likely to struggle against certain builds than my necrons.
- On the flip side, opponents are more likely to have trouble with my tyranids as well. The competitive meta nowadays is flyers and most people are gearing their army up to be able to fight flyers. Psychic monstrous creatures and inexperience against them will throw some of these people off. I am literally banking on the element of surprise (more like unfamiliarity) to help me overcome some of these mismatches.
- Despite the taxing nature of tyranids in a GT, it is going to be oh-so-sweeeeet when I win with them.
I'm excited to be meeting a lot of dakkalite there. Maybe we'll get a game in? Who knows. Have you decided on what you will be taking? You've got some strong armies, whether it be your crons or your daemons.
Well, my Necrons and/or Necrorks are not travel-ready (or fully painted) at the moment, so it's going to be Daemons. Some tweaks from my list at FoB, except now featuring Fiends and a Herald of Nurgle (!!!). I hope we get a game in, but if you're bringing bugs I think I'd be just as happy to miss the opportunity... Tyranids are a really tough matchup for my Daemons, so I will settle for just being able to say hello!
That's too bad. I'd sure like to beat.....uh, I mean, meet another GT winner.
Ha ha....I'm always the casual, competitive gamer. Yeah, both orks and necrons make good allies to any army. I myself was considering necrorks back before the CSM codex came out. And now, my necrorks are going to have to wait a little longer as I go back to my daemonic roots once the new Daemons codex comes out.
Herald of Nurgle? Wow, this I gotta see....
Enceladus wrote: I play Grey Knights with Necron allies and of all the armies I've faced, 'Nids are the one's I've struggled to overcome most.
A skilled player commanding a well built 'Nid army is a formidable opponent. I say since you've already proven yourself as a top Necron general, see if you can take the swarm to victory. I'd love to see all of the haters and doubters eat their words when the Hive Mind claims it's first major 6th ed Tournament win.
Yeah, due to the lack of low-AP weaponry, necrons do have problems against the bugs. As a necron player, I also find tyranids (in particular, Janthkin's tyranids) to be such a tough fight.
And now with tyranid psychic powers, grey knights are much easier for tyranids to face compared to last edition (not that they are an easy army to beat, just a little easier than before). Grey knights can still hurt the bugs, but they are no longer the bad matchup that they used to be.
jy2 wrote:Herald of Nurgle? Wow, this I gotta see....
Don't mess with the Herald of Nurgle, he's a straight-up killer. Honestly, though, he has one very important job to do: hide in the corner and try not to give up Slay the Warlord. IME, he's a much safer bet than Kairos "Kill Me" Fateweaver.
Really glad you've decided to go with Tyranids... Now who should I bribe to make sure we don't get paired?
jy2 i am lookign forward to seeing your Nids at BAO! i was at the Golden Throne and sporting my DE. I will be sporting my DE w/ Eldar Allies at BAO.
Is it evil of me to vote for Nids and hope you bring them because I feel it will be an easier match up for me? LOL.. . Look forward to seeing you there!
jy2 wrote:Herald of Nurgle? Wow, this I gotta see....
Don't mess with the Herald of Nurgle, he's a straight-up killer. Honestly, though, he has one very important job to do: hide in the corner and try not to give up Slay the Warlord. IME, he's a much safer bet than Kairos "Kill Me" Fateweaver.
Really glad you've decided to go with Tyranids... Now who should I bribe to make sure we don't get paired?
Yeah, I figured that's what his role is for. But that's bad news for everyone else. Means they'll probably be seeing 27 screamers, 18 flamers and 6 fiends. Gulp!
BTW, did you see my battle report against daemons?
SCP Yeeman wrote: jy2 i am lookign forward to seeing your Nids at BAO! i was at the Golden Throne and sporting my DE. I will be sporting my DE w/ Eldar Allies at BAO.
Is it evil of me to vote for Nids and hope you bring them because I feel it will be an easier match up for me? LOL.. . Look forward to seeing you there!
Deldar is another bad matchup for my bugs, but you know what? I relish the challenge.
I just played against Deldar recently with a seer council and beastpack dual-deathstars. They were both tough battles:
i see my list as very TAC. It doesnt have any real hard counters i think besides Tau, but I think I can take down Tau if I play them. Nothing is over the top or anything you haven't seen. Most will see it as a weak list. But it has counters to everything and can go toe to toe I believe with anythign out there.
Ah, a synergistic TAC army....those are some of the most under-rated but dangerous lists of all, much like my bugs. I will be sure not to under-estimate your army if we do happen to play against each other.
Though I've got to warn you....flyrants with precision shots will make mincemeat out of that beastpack unless you can get Invisibility.
Not until now. That was a stomach-churning read, akin to watching myself get punched in the nose. Really took me back to my last match against Tyranids, which ended in a win strictly because we were in a KP mission. Had it been objectives, table quarters, anything else, I would've been done for. The worst part was that, in the end, I had very little idea of how I could've done better. Wish I could say I've been practicing for that match-up, but I've encountered precisely 0 Tyranid players at the local tournaments I attend. Maybe I just need to start playing them myself so I can figure out the little buggers... OK, it's settled. Now I'm bringing Nids to BAO. Gotta go, will be busy painting tonight.
Not until now. That was a stomach-churning read, akin to watching myself get punched in the nose. Really took me back to my last match against Tyranids, which ended in a win strictly because we were in a KP mission. Had it been objectives, table quarters, anything else, I would've been done for. The worst part was that, in the end, I had very little idea of how I could've done better. Wish I could say I've been practicing for that match-up, but I've encountered precisely 0 Tyranid players at the local tournaments I attend. Maybe I just need to start playing them myself so I can figure out the little buggers... OK, it's settled. Now I'm bringing Nids to BAO. Gotta go, will be busy painting tonight.
Wow, are you actually changing armies? Do you have enough time to get them ready? I would usually advice you (in general) to stick to your guns and trust your instincts. Use the army that you originally wanted to use. Don't change it up because you are worried about a particular matchup at this point (as long as your army is balanced).
Then again, the Hive Mind will welcome another Hive Mind. Human, space elf, greenskin or another bug - we don't discriminate....we eat them all. Nom nom nom.....
Dok wrote: I'm going to vote nids as I'd rather play against that than the necron list, haha.
Yeah, I'm sure most people will be happy that there's one less flyer army out there.
jifel wrote: I voted number 1 for the poll. It'll happen! Of course, the Internet will revolt if Nids win a GT. I'd just love to see that though!
It's a race between me, you and other young Hive Minds out there. I'm sure one day, one of us out there will win one of these GT's. We definitely stand a better chance now in 6th than we did back in 5th.
I'm voting top 10. I honestly don't think matchups will be your biggest problem. Speed playing will be. Have you been practicing games under a strict time limit yet?
Just a few. Most of my games I've played at a more leisurely pace. I'm not too concerned though (unless I am playing another army like bugs, orks or IG). I think that I play at a decent pace.
I voted top 10. The odds are just crazy and the dice are fickle when talking about winning it all with 150 people. Not saying you can't do it because you list is awesome and you clearly know how to play it. Just saying the odds are stacked against everyone. But best of luck, I've enjoyed your batreps thoroughly and it's been a good glimpse into the hive mind.
Take it down Jy2!! I am in a GT in 3 weeks and bringing a similar list to yours (minus the biovores and adding devilgants in pods) I'd be happy to see your results!
Not until now. That was a stomach-churning read, akin to watching myself get punched in the nose. Really took me back to my last match against Tyranids, which ended in a win strictly because we were in a KP mission. Had it been objectives, table quarters, anything else, I would've been done for. The worst part was that, in the end, I had very little idea of how I could've done better. Wish I could say I've been practicing for that match-up, but I've encountered precisely 0 Tyranid players at the local tournaments I attend. Maybe I just need to start playing them myself so I can figure out the little buggers... OK, it's settled. Now I'm bringing Nids to BAO. Gotta go, will be busy painting tonight.
Wow, are you actually changing armies? Do you have enough time to get them ready? I would usually advice you (in general) to stick to your guns and trust your instincts. Use the army that you originally wanted to use. Don't change it up because you are worried about a particular matchup at this point (as long as your army is balanced).
Then again, the Hive Mind will welcome another Hive Mind. Human, space elf, greenskin or another bug - we don't discriminate....we eat them all. Nom nom nom.....
Hahah, nah, I'll be sticking with Daemons. I've really wanted to pick up bugs since 6th, but that's an idle thought not yet come to fruition. Having just started on Orks a few months ago, working on three Blood Bowl teams-in-progress, and now with Daemons apparently turning horde...I'm thinking that's probably not going to happen any time soon! Despite a few bad matchups, I do feel really confident in my Daemons. I am expecting to take a little ribbing for using a defunct codex and my best case scenario is a kind-of-meaningless win, but hey, I've really got no choice at this point. Anyway, I've got to go get ready to get on a plane. See you soon!
Get the right powers and they are near unstoppable. Get the wrong ones and it will be an uphill battle. This army is more at the mercy of the dice than the crons. However, they are an underdog army and many people would like to see an underdog army try to take it.
This is the crux of the issue for me and summed up very well.
I think going into full blown, proper tournaments part of a good army build is trying to minimise the "luck and dice" factor as much as possible.
In every game/event one could be a stunning general and have great tactics but roll all ones and flunk out first game.
However, minimising this eventulity as much as possible is also a sign of a great general.
Hence, the fact that your Nid build relys on the luck of the dice with powers (to a greater or lesser degree), I would go with the Crons.
However a simple and open question:
Do you intend to win and get top spot or play a good tournament with a slightly less optimal army?
Latter= Nids
Former= Crons imo.
GL anyways, I'll be keeping a look out for the reps and result
Chancetragedy wrote: I voted top 10. The odds are just crazy and the dice are fickle when talking about winning it all with 150 people. Not saying you can't do it because you list is awesome and you clearly know how to play it. Just saying the odds are stacked against everyone. But best of luck, I've enjoyed your batreps thoroughly and it's been a good glimpse into the hive mind.
Yeah, I know. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be damn tough actually, but I do feel that I have a shot realistically. Oh well, here's to hoping for the best .....<*starts praying to the Dice Gods*>
roxor08 wrote: Take it down Jy2!! I am in a GT in 3 weeks and bringing a similar list to yours (minus the biovores and adding devilgants in pods) I'd be happy to see your results!
Good lucky on number 1!!!
Thanks! And good luck to you also. So that's 3 dakka bug players in 3 different GT's (me, you and Jifel so far). Alright, our chances of winning at least 1 GT has just tripled.
wuestenfux wrote: Yeah, all the best jy2, and good luck with your dice!
Thanks! Gonna need it!
Please, dice gods...at least let me get the psychic powers I that I want against the bad matchups.....
Siphen wrote: Top 10 easily. Good luck and I'll look forward to reading your reports!
May you roll Iron Arms a plenty and never forget an It-Will-Not-Die Roll! (a short Nid blessing passed down generation to generation)
wyomingfox wrote: Or FEAR or Hammer of Wrath or Blinding Spittle . Sometimes it would just be easier to play Space Puppies
Thanks for the reminders guys. Better brush up on my rules again!
Hahah, nah, I'll be sticking with Daemons. I've really wanted to pick up bugs since 6th, but that's an idle thought not yet come to fruition. Having just started on Orks a few months ago, working on three Blood Bowl teams-in-progress, and now with Daemons apparently turning horde...I'm thinking that's probably not going to happen any time soon! Despite a few bad matchups, I do feel really confident in my Daemons. I am expecting to take a little ribbing for using a defunct codex and my best case scenario is a kind-of-meaningless win, but hey, I've really got no choice at this point. Anyway, I've got to go get ready to get on a plane. See you soon!
That's the spirit! Daemons are still tough, even for tyranids. If those tervigons run out early, it could be game over for the bugs.
Can't wait to pick up my copy of the new Daemon codex there as well! After this tourney, it's daemons once again for me (sorry, Grey Knights....you're just going to have to wait).
Get the right powers and they are near unstoppable. Get the wrong ones and it will be an uphill battle. This army is more at the mercy of the dice than the crons. However, they are an underdog army and many people would like to see an underdog army try to take it.
This is the crux of the issue for me and summed up very well.
I think going into full blown, proper tournaments part of a good army build is trying to minimise the "luck and dice" factor as much as possible.
In every game/event one could be a stunning general and have great tactics but roll all ones and flunk out first game.
However, minimising this eventulity as much as possible is also a sign of a great general.
Hence, the fact that your Nid build relys on the luck of the dice with powers (to a greater or lesser degree), I would go with the Crons.
However a simple and open question:
Do you intend to win and get top spot or play a good tournament with a slightly less optimal army?
Latter= Nids
Former= Crons imo.
GL anyways, I'll be keeping a look out for the reps and result
Yeah, psychic powers definitely help in the matchups. However, bugs can still play through despite unfavorable powers. I've had a streak where I didn't get good powers for my flyrants for like 3-4 games. I believe I still won those. And then I believe there was a stretch where I didn't get Endurance for a few games. If you don't get the powers you want, then you're just going to have to improvise. It's far from an auto-loss.
I intend to win but with a more challenging army. I've already done so once with my crons. Now to try to do so with an army many would consider an underdog.
Ok, last post before the tournament. Then it's off to the event tomorrow morning for me and SabrX.
Come on by and say hi. And if you want, I will put you in my battle report. I'm going to take a little more of a personal perspective of the games. I'm not just playing against another army. I'm playing against another person!
And here is my army - Hive Fleet Pandora:
Almost completed.
Finally finished my termagants. Well, 20 of them at least.
Also worked on my biovores. Only 1 left to finish.
Last but not least, got a new flyrant and was able to finish him before the tournament. Should have used him as my Warlord. He got Iron Arm in maybe 4-5 of my games! My actual Warlord flyrant only got Iron Arm once!
Ok, took a lot of pictures of other people's armies. There were 144 players, of which I probably got photos of half the armies. As there are a lot of pics, I'm going to organize it by categories. The photos within do not represent all the armies in those categories, just some of them.
First off, a special mention to the winner of the BAO and her beautiful "Sea Daemons"
Elizabeth Foster, the hardcore gaming nut (no, just kidding). She is the only person ever to go a perfect 7-0 at the BAO, beating the very, very good Alan Bajramovic in the final game for the BAO Championship.
Frontlinegaming will be posting the videorep of their game in the future (I think).
And her beautifully converted "Sea Daemons" Chaos Daemon army. Sorry for the mess as this photo was taken just right after she finished her game.
There appears to be a theme in this tournament and that theme isn't really Forgeworld. Yes, there were a lot of FW units in this tournament. However, even more prevalent than FW is what I will call the predominant tournament builds:
Heldrake Armies:
Spoiler:
Whether pure heldrake armies or heldrake allies, heldrakes were everywhere. Perhaps the best flyer in the game currently, people were really milking them for all they were worth. But despite the prevalence of these flaming turkeys, I believe only 1 heldrake army made it to the Top 10.
Without further ado, the armies:
IG will heldrake ally, plus 1 Forgeworld Vulture.
Heldrakes with IG allies.
Triple-converted heldrakes. Where's the baleflamer again?
Another triple-headache, I mean heldrake, army.
Ken's (aka Hippesthippo) single-heldrake army with single-scythe necron allies. Say what?!? In any case, Ken did very well, ending the tournament with a 5-2 record
BTW, just behind him is the runner-up to the tournament, Alan Bajramovic.
The Forces of (Non-Heldrake) Chaos:
Spoiler:
If there were any heldrakes in these armies, they weren't up when I took my photos.
Here's a special shout out to another GT winner, Alex (aka Whigwam). Alex won the Feast of Blades GT with his no-nonsense-in-your-face-beat-you-til-you're-blue daemons.
And you know what's really cool? I actually got to play against him! GT winner vs GT winner. Man, I was hoping for this matchup and I got it!
I actually don't know if this army was actually Chaos or not, but judging from the Daemon Prince, I'd say at least this army was corrupted. And instead of heldrakes....Forgeworld Avengers!
Just pure awesomesauce. A Chaos/IG combo. All I can say is, "Wow...."
This army sure looks chaotic. A converted Tomb King chaos army.
Chaos/chaos alliance.
Pure daemons and pure awesomeness.
Pure daemons. Fateflamer. Or is it Fatescreamer?
Eldar/Dark Eldar:
Spoiler:
There were actually quite a few Eldar, Dark Eldar and Deldar players in da house!
Grant (aka SonsofGrant) and Tim (aka SabrX). BTW, Grant's the tall one.
Cody Jiru's (aka SCP Yeeman) deldars. Cody did an awesome job, winning Best Dark Eldar player and nabbing 4th Overall! Congrats on a very fine job!
Mark Broughton's Wraithdar! A teammate of Cody's, Mark won Best Eldar! Way to go, my man!
Awesome razorwings! Nothing like a nice airbrush job.
Probably the only army that I didn't want to face with my bugs - DE Venom-spam! (Nah, just kidding....bring it on!)
Mark's Eldar + Forgeworld. Mark is from my LGS (Game Kastle in San Jose) and his army included a Warp Hunter and some Wasps.
The Imperial Guards:
Spoiler:
Another big turnout thanks to all those Forgeworld units - the Imperial Guards!
Tablewar's very own, Doug Johnson. Almost everything there was Forgeworld, from the Vulture to the Sabre platforms to the Medusa/Basilisk Heavy Artillery platforms. That was 1 scary army!
The carrying-case is what Doug's company do. They're really awesome carrying/display cases. If you're interested, drop by their website: http://www.tablewar.com
Some more Sabre platforms.
Wowsers Howitzers! Then throw in a few Hyperios Launchers in this IG/Dark Angels alliance.
Vulture, Avenger, Medusa Artilleries and Thudd guns. No wonder so many brought out the guards. They just have all the cool new toys!
Thunderbolts of lightning, so very very frightening! Hyperios, Hades Breach Drills, we will not let you go. Let you go, let you go....
What an awesome Samurai-themed IG army. Truly spectacular.
Can we say....WTF!?! (And I mean WTF in the nicest way )
The "Marines":
Spoiler:
Blood Angels:
Dark Angels:
Trent (aka Ministry) brought his land raider-Banner of Devastation-Power Field DA Greenwing. I believe he was the only one in the whole tournament to bring any land raiders at all!
DA with 2 Contemptors.
Very nicely done conversions (I think).
Space Wolves:
Christian Alessi, the winner of the BAO last year 2012, brought a space wolves/space marines army with Forgeworld this time around - 2 Contemptor dreads and some Hyperios Launchers. BTW, I played against Christian for the Golden Throne GT championship last year.
Vanilla marines:
Dan May (aka Captn Dees) and his gorgeous space marine bikers.
Drop Pod armies:
Drop pod DoA Angels.
Necrons:
Spoiler:
There actually wasn't a lot of necrons in this tournament, much less the Necron Airforce. Were people that much afraid of Forgeworld?
With 2 Forgeworld Tomb Stalkers.
This was probably the only Necron Airforce army with 6 flyers (3 night scythes and 3 doom scythes).
One of the nicer necron armies with some nice conversions.
The Inquisition:
Spoiler:
Grey Knights were definitely under-represented in this tournament:
One of several Draigowing players. I played against the other 2 (Blackmoor and Grey Therion), though I don't have their army pics.
Tournament veteran and Team Zero Comp member, Dave Fay and his 50 purifiers! And then he goes up against 50 heldrakes!!! I must say that this tournament was very unforgiving to foot-marines.
The Sisters were out in full force, with a lot of nice armies:
Some awesome freehand in this Sisters army.
Some Forgeworld Repressors and an interesting Stormraven conversion.
Celestine-led Sisters/grey knights combo.
Tau/Orks:
Spoiler:
My friend, Tim's (aka SabrX) nob bikers Tau-Orks (Torks) army. For someone who barely practiced with his army (just 1 game against me), he did extremely well, going 5-2 and almost nabbing Best Tau player in the process.
The runner-up to the Best Appearance/Painted award. His army and display board with LED lights was just gorgeous.
And then we have the winner of the Best Appearance award - Israel's Tau/Eldar:
I can't say enough about how beautiful and spectacular his army was. Truly worthy of the Best Appearance award.
A very nicely converted ork army.
The only other Tork army that I saw (besides SabrX's).
Necrorks!
y0disisray's Wazdakka-led orks.
Tyranids:
Spoiler:
Last but not least, we had a strong showing for the bugs:
Yours truly:
Thought I'd put my bugs in this category again so that all the bugs were together.
Janthkin was also at the tourney as well, though I didn't take a picture of his army.
Looking at this army was almost like looking into the mirror in terms of army composition. Wow, our armies were strikingly similar. Wonder if my reports have had any influence on his army?
Very scary Nidzilla army with 7 monstrous creatures!!!
Actually, most of the bug armies used the same core footprints - dual flyrants, dual tervigons and the Doom.
This army actually broke the mode....it only had 1 flyrant!!! He also brought the Forgeworld Malanthrope.
Another very nicely done tyranid army.
Ok, all finished with the army pics. Stay tuned for my first battle report - Game #1 - coming tomorrow.
I really hope you take first with your nids, it's been a great time watching you improve with them this past year.
I might have mentioned it before but it was your battle reports that got my brother and me back into 40k. Thanks for the inspiration and the incredibly entertaining chronicles of your battles.
Good luck, I reckon Top 5, if there had been a Top 3 option I would have chosen that, and if I had to bet money I'd go 3rd place.
That is if I had any spare money that wasn't already being funneled into wargaming lol
Also, if you want to freak your opponents out a bit, grow your hair a bit and make it spikey, shave your beard, and dress the same as the bobblehead. Then wear it on your shoulder. Talk to it, feed it, all sorts of things you can do to make people distracted. And it'd make for a hilarious photo.
As a Ork player I say go nids. A good ork player can build a list that will tear apart corns, but the same list will not do well against bugs. That could be said of most armies I think. Throw in that wrench at let havoc reign.
Man, just got back from the tournament and had an awesome time. First of all, I'd like to thank Reece, Frankie and the people at Frontlinegaming for putting up the event. You guys did an excellent job!
Secondly, I'd like to congratulate the winner of the event - the very first female player to ever win a large GT (and with a non-flamer/screamer-spam Daemon army!!!). Congratulations, Liz, for making 40K history!
Sorry....tired, hungry and need to go watch the Walking Dead (before sleeping). More updates tomorrow.
More Dakka wrote: Good luck! Also LOL, is that a bobblehead of yourself?!
jy2 wrote: Man, just got back from the tournament and had an awesome time. First of all, I'd like to thank Reece, Frankie and the people at Frontlinegaming for putting up the event. You guys did an excellent job!
Secondly, I'd like to congratulate the winner of the event - the very first female player to ever win a large GT (and with a non-flamer/screamer-spam Daemon army!!!). Congratulations, Liz, for making 40K history!
I wish I lived in the US, I can't imagine large tournaments like that happening down here. And wasn't she also the first to carry the BAO undefeated? 7 wins on the trot or something along those lines?
The tournament winner, Elizabeth Foster, played daemons. Her army was:
2 Heralds of Tzeentch on Chariots
1 Bloodthirster
3 Flamer units
4 Horror units
2 Screamer units
She went a perfect 7-0, the only person to ever do so at the BAO. She beat Alan Bajramovic - a very good player who won TSHFT and Wargamescon and is a member of Team USA at the ETC - to win the title.
But I just wanted to point out one thing about the Crons; Gloom Prisms on Spyders, that 4+ null psychic powers is pretty nice, considering the only thing better than that wargear is the Grey Knights Null Rod.
The tournament winner, Elizabeth Foster, played daemons. Her army was:
2 Heralds of Tzeentch on Chariots 1 Bloodthirster 3 Flamer units 4 Horror units 2 Screamer units
She went a perfect 7-0, the only person to ever do so at the BAO. She beat Alan Bajramovic - a very good player who won TSHFT and Wargamescon and is a member of Team USA at the ETC - to win the title.
You had me confused and slightly concerned for a while when you said that she wasn't running Flamer/Screamer spam, without either of those two units Daemons aren't anywhere near as strong so it would be a massive surprise to see that take out a top GT. However that list isn't Flamer and Screamer spam, its a more balanced Flamer and Screamer list with a Thirster to deal with Fliers and more than 2 small Plaguebearers so you have more options in heavily objective based missions.
Are you putting your batreps in this thread, or starting a new one? Either way, I think it's safe to say we're all really looking forward to reading about your weekend!
I couldn't get accross the border ... I had passport issues with your @@##4 customs and missed the tournament and my business appointment down south. Ah well. At least Xenos and not Necrons won. It was the last hurrah for screamer/flamer spam too.
Eldarain wrote: I really hope you take first with your nids, it's been a great time watching you improve with them this past year.
I might have mentioned it before but it was your battle reports that got my brother and me back into 40k. Thanks for the inspiration and the incredibly entertaining chronicles of your battles.
Best of luck!
Jason
You're very welcome!
I'm glad I'm able to inspire. When you love a hobby, there's nothing more gratifying than to be able to encourage more people to get into (or get back into) this great hobby of ours.
motyak wrote: Good luck, I reckon Top 5, if there had been a Top 3 option I would have chosen that, and if I had to bet money I'd go 3rd place.
That is if I had any spare money that wasn't already being funneled into wargaming lol
Also, if you want to freak your opponents out a bit, grow your hair a bit and make it spikey, shave your beard, and dress the same as the bobblehead. Then wear it on your shoulder. Talk to it, feed it, all sorts of things you can do to make people distracted. And it'd make for a hilarious photo.
Nah, that'll give me too much of an advantage.
Stormbreed wrote: Just finished a 1500 astrominicon. It ended DE 1 , nids 2. I hope you rock and take first. Love your reports man.
Thanks! So were you DE or were you the bugs?
krazykishere wrote: As a Ork player I say go nids. A good ork player can build a list that will tear apart corns, but the same list will not do well against bugs. That could be said of most armies I think. Throw in that wrench at let havoc reign.
Yeah. It's hard to fight both a good necron army and a good tyranid army. And with the number of cover-ignoring weapons at the tournament there, orks had a really tough time (i.e. all those heldrakes, thunderfire cannons, flamers, etc.).
However, my friend SabrX did really good with his Torks (Tau/Orks), going 5-2 overall.
But I just wanted to point out one thing about the Crons; Gloom Prisms on Spyders, that 4+ null psychic powers is pretty nice, considering the only thing better than that wargear is the Grey Knights Null Rod.
Im excited to see the photos now!
The only problem with that is that spyders are so slow. If you trail the scarabs, then they will be protected. However, if you run wraiths like I do, the wraiths will usually outpace the spyders by a long shot, especially when you move and assault. But still, I guess something is better than nothing and for anyone who ever runs spyders, definitely consider getting the Gloom Prism.
You had me confused and slightly concerned for a while when you said that she wasn't running Flamer/Screamer spam, without either of those two units Daemons aren't anywhere near as strong so it would be a massive surprise to see that take out a top GT. However that list isn't Flamer and Screamer spam, its a more balanced Flamer and Screamer list with a Thirster to deal with Fliers and more than 2 small Plaguebearers so you have more options in heavily objective based missions.
Sorry. I was going off what I saw and with some of her heavy conversions, it's quite hard to tell what some of her units were. It didn't look like she was spamming flamers/screamers.
In any case, yeah, her Tzeentch daemons were a little more balanced than some of the other daemon armies, incorporating not only flamers and screamers.
I'm looking forward to hearing about your games and the overall experience! (And maybe get an idea of how well the DA players fared!) I haven't played competitively in over a decade, reading your battle reports on the run up to the BAO really got me excited, I think I'll have to attend next year!
Valek wrote: when seeing the helldrake armies, people seem to make lists and assume they will do everything, you need a very agressive list and playstyle.
as with all flyers if you fail to dictate the game they will take them down.
but tbh so many deamons man, good job on nerfing those flamers GW, to bad you nerfed the whole army to smithereens in the proces though
Not too familiar with the new Daemon army yet, as I have yet to get the codex. However, I do agree that heldrakes need to be complemented with the right units. Seems like a lot of the "heldrake armies" just took advantage of the heldrakes without having a whole lot of synergy in the army.
Then again, I only played against 1 heldrake army in the entire tournament. That's too bad because heldrakes don't really bother my army too much.
felixcat wrote: I couldn't get accross the border ... I had passport issues with your @@##4 customs and missed the tournament and my business appointment down south. Ah well. At least Xenos and not Necrons won. It was the last hurrah for screamer/flamer spam too.
That really blows. Sorry to hear about that.
So were you planning to come to the BAO, or was it another tournament that you missed?
Surprisingly, necrons weren't really that common at this tournament. They were actually a "minority" army.
Wait...you can get personal bobble heads!?! That is so cool!
Yeah, had it customized in Asia. Pretty cool souvenir.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Brock79 wrote: I'm looking forward to hearing about your games and the overall experience! (And maybe get an idea of how well the DA players fared!) I haven't played competitively in over a decade, reading your battle reports on the run up to the BAO really got me excited, I think I'll have to attend next year!
Awesome! Come join the party.
Even though there were some competitive armies out there, overall I think most of the people had a lot of fun.
I think DA did alright. There were 3 DA players who made it to the Top 20.
SCP Yeeman wrote: The Blue DE with the white and green Eldar allies was mine, it is the 3rd shown DE army. I got 4th overall and best DE player.
The caption with "Wraithdar!" under it was my buddy Mark Broughton's Iyanden army. He won best Eldar player.
Thanks for the pics and congrats on Best Nid!
Awesome! Thanks for the introductions. I'll be sure to mention you guys under your armies. For my reports, I like to also introduce the persons, not just the armies (at least for those that I've met). Congrats to both you and and Mark for a very fine job, both in your armies and your performances!
Hey JY2 its a shame these GT's fell on the same weekend. I will definitely be reading up on how you did. My dumbass was in such a hurry to get out the door Friday for an overnight drive that I forgot my camera. :(
Side note: i am actually trying to get back into nids. I miss my nid army...
I only had 1 Scythe and 1 Dragon because I'm a REAL man.
..to be honest, there is a reason none of the triple drake/scythe spam armies did that well this tournament. It's really hard to make a balanced list, with all the tools you need to win, with more than 2 flyers at 1750.
The abundance of skyfire/interceptor, which I correctly expected, also played a large role in my decision making process.
More pics up. Will finish posting the army pics tonight after dinner. I sure took a lot of pictures. No wonder most of my games were going the distance.
Tomb King wrote: Hey JY2 its a shame these GT's fell on the same weekend. I will definitely be reading up on how you did. My dumbass was in such a hurry to get out the door Friday for an overnight drive that I forgot my camera. :(
Side note: i am actually trying to get back into nids. I miss my nid army...
Likewise. Interested in seeing how you did as well. I'm actually starting to warm up to your necron/CSM army. BTW, if you ever go to a tournament in the West Coast, try to make this one. It's got some of the best players here in the West Coast.
Nids are oh so good IMO. I never felt in any of my matchups that my bugs were underdogs. Heck, I truly felt that I could have won it all with my bugs. That's how good they are, especially now that DE venom-spam isn't en vogue any more.
So were you planning to come to the BAO, or was it another tournament that you missed?
BAO - with Deldar. I'll just have to play the next Canadian event instead.
Man, that sure sucks. Too bad you couldn't make it here, but at least you've still got Adepticon, Nova and Wargamescon if you still want to try your skills at large, major US GT. Oh well, there's always next year possibly.
hippesthippo wrote: I only had 1 Scythe and 1 Dragon because I'm a REAL man.
..to be honest, there is a reason none of the triple drake/scythe spam armies did that well this tournament. It's really hard to make a balanced list, with all the tools you need to win, with more than 2 flyers at 1750.
The abundance of skyfire/interceptor, which I correctly expected, also played a large role in my decision making process.
Yeah, you da MAN! Congrats on doing so well here. Your army must be under-estimated a lot with just 2 flyers in it. Lol. Sometimes, the synergies of these armies are just amazing! And yeah, many of those double/triple flyer lists are just really unbalanced. You still need a lot of resiliency on the ground, which is what your army had. Zombies FTW!
Good grief...come on people. Drop the crutch of using Aegis lines. Just about every army had one. I guess we forgot to adapt to the terrain given to us in games. Kudos to the people that left them at home. Bravo to Elizabeth on her undefeated record. Hopefully, other gamer women will be motivated to play more. She's a great ambassador to the game for women.
hippesthippo wrote: I only had 1 Scythe and 1 Dragon because I'm a REAL man.
..to be honest, there is a reason none of the triple drake/scythe spam armies did that well this tournament. It's really hard to make a balanced list, with all the tools you need to win, with more than 2 flyers at 1750.
The abundance of skyfire/interceptor, which I correctly expected, also played a large role in my decision making process.
Somewhere i have to agree with that analysis, but if you want you can still do, the Dragon is one of the flyers who can just laugh with S7 skyfire, it is not evident to kill it, hell when wrong place you could even vector strike one when it comes in.
But then again is stay with my comment, you need an army that is made around the Dragons and complement be it, it needs agression and ways to hurt his skyfire in turn1.
Great pictures and some awesome armies. Must have been a blast. Seeing all this makes me want to create a display board! Then again, that's what I've been saying for a few years now...
William (aka ImotekhTheStormlord) is a kid who plays at my LGS - Game Kastle in San Jose. We see each other there all the time but I've never played against him before (though we did play in an Apoc game together). I don't think he is a real competitive player, but I guess I will find out.
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #1 - The Emperor's Will (4pts) & Crusade (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #4, Crusade is worth 3-points and The Emperor's Will worth 4-points.
His list doesn't look really competitive. He's running mainly a shooty necron build with lots of warriors but no real scary units. I think list-wise, he's going to have a lot of trouble dealing with my MC's (with the exception of his Overlord). Also, I think the Doom is going to present a real problem to my opponent. Lastly, I've definitely got the experience edge on my young opponent. I'm afraid this is going to be a rough one for him. The only thing he has that may survive will probably be his stormraven. Let's see how well David can do against Goliath.
Shooting puts 1W on my tervigon and 1W on my non-Warlord flyrant only.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
Every turn I would cast my psychic powers.
Both flyrants swoop after his purifiers (with Coteaz). My flyrants are always swooping unless they are preparing to assault.
The rest of my army moves.
The hive guards shoot down his rhino for First Blood. I then shoot down only 3 purifiers and 1 necron warrior with my flyrants and biovores (he was rolling well on his saves as well as his necron's Reanimation Protocols)
Necrons 2
Spoiler:
Only the 2 night scythes come in from reserves. My opponent actually still does not remember about his 2 annihilation barges (and neither did I, else I would have reminded him).
I don't know what the hell happened...but he manages to kill my flyrant and a tervigon with just 2 night scythes and his warriors!!!
His night scythe hits and wounds my flyrant 3 times only and I fail all 3 saves and all 3 FNP's. I then also fail all my saves for my tervigon as well! I am stunned....
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
The Doom comes in.
My tervigon spawn some gants and my army advances. The zoan perils and fails to cast Iron Arm.
Gants swarm around the objectives.
My Warlord (T7 currently with FNP) swoops behind his flyers. This is probably the only mistake I make in the game. I target a night scythe with my flyrant but manage only to take off 1 Hull Point, stunning the the flyer. In retrospect, I should have gone after his troop warriors.
The Doom wipes out Coteaz and the purifiers and then kills 3 warriors with Psychic Shriek.
Biovores fire at his warriors. My wound rolls are horrible as I only kill 2 warriors out of about 8 hits.
Gargoyles attempt to assault his left warriors. However, overwatch kills 2-3 and I then fail my charge through difficult terrain.
Necrons 3
Spoiler:
My opponent finally remembers about his annihilation barge. 1 AB and the stormraven both comes in.
Night scythes go after my gants on objective. He disembarks both units.
They easily finish off my gants.
AB, melta-henchmen and warriors go after my flyrant.
In another stunning turn of events, he shoots down my swooping T7 Warlord with FNP!!! What is going on?!?
Finally, his Overlord, who split from the unit of warriors, assault the Doom to lock him in place. I fail my MSS test but fortunately, pass my invulns.
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
I go after his troops.
Biovores fire at his far troops but scatter off. I believe I only manage to kill 1 warrior.
Tervigon and zoans then assault.
I win combat and the zoans sweep the warriors.
Necrons 4
Spoiler:
This will be the last game turn as we are running out of time.
His warriors start making their moves to the objectives (his Emperor's Will objective).
His other unit of warriors run to contest my Emperor's Will objective.
He shoots the contesting gargoyles off of his Crusade objective.
In assault, MSS fails and his Overlord puts 1W on the Doom. BTW, his henchmen is heading towards the Crusade objective and I've already killed his other unit of henchmen.
Tyranids 4
Spoiler:
I fail to wipe out his warriors on his Emperor's Will objective, killing all but 2 out in the open with my 4 biovores. So he still has his Emperor's Will objective. If I had wiped them out, I would have won.
Tervigon spawns 11 gants. I then assault his warriors.
His warriors kill 3 gants. My tervigon then kills 3 warriors by itself. My gants then hit and wound 6 times. My opponent proceeds to pass 5 out of his 6 saves! He also passes his morale to stay locked in combat, thus contesting my Emperor's Will objective.
If I had broken them in combat, I would have won.
Finally, the Doom, who is S10 after Spirit Leeching his 2 henchmen and 1W from his Warlord, insta-gibs his Warlord with 1 fatal attack, thus giving me that Crusade objective.
So I've got the Secondary mission, Crusade, 2 objectives to his 1.
However, my opponent has got the Primary, the Emperor's Will.
We've both killed each other's Warlords. I've got First Blood (the rhino). He's got Linebreaker (his warriors).
In a stunning upset, the upstart crons take it 6-5!
In a stunning upset, I am out of the running already. My opponent, William, played well enough without any real mistakes. I made a crucial one. Despite losing my 1 flyrant and 1 tervigon early, I was still in it. However, I went after his night scythe with my flyrant rather than his warriors. I should have went after his warriors. First of all, I could have taken out another scoring unit. Secondly, had I taken them out, he would have had less units to retaliate against my flyrant. And lastly, I might get stuck in combat and thus protected from his shooting. The dice did hurt, but honestly, I felt that I beat myself.
Oh well, I guess my goal right now is no longer the championship. Rather, I'm going to have to settle for trying to get Best Tyranid player and even that is no easy feat. There's a lot of good tyranid armies in the tournament and most of them went 1-0 the first round. I am already behind. Also, Janthkin had decided at the 11th Hour to compete as well and he dominated his 1st turn opponent.
As for William, he would go on to finish the tournament with a 4-2-1 (W-L-D) record.
Man I am so jealous of Tomb Stalkers (appearance wise)...seriously, why can't my Trygons be modeled slithering on their stomachs...rather than walking on their rear 24/7.
Game 1, Ouch! Losing that Flyrant at the top of turn 2 is a devastating blow! Bad rolling on those saves and FNP. Will played agressive, disembarking his Warriors early on. Will rolled well having two warrior survive combat to contest Crusade objective and two other Crons survinging your AP4 barrage Biovores to score Emperor's objective. Had the game continued to turn 5, you would have won (unless you roll poorly again).
SabrX wrote: Game 1, Ouch! Losing that Flyrant at the top of turn 2 is a devastating blow! Bad rolling on those saves and FNP. Will played agressive, disembarking his Warriors early on. Will rolled well having two warrior survive combat to contest Crusade objective and two other Crons survinging your AP4 barrage Biovores to score Emperor's objective. Had the game continued to turn 5, you would have won (unless you roll poorly again).
Yeah, had we continued on, I would have had the better chance to win. Alas, in a tournament, when it's over, it's over. Nothing much you can do but to re-adjust your expectations and move on.
Eldarain wrote: Crazy turn of events after he forgot about two powerful units.
Yeah, to to think that he didn't even really need them to do all that damage!
SabrX wrote: Game 1, Ouch! Losing that Flyrant at the top of turn 2 is a devastating blow! Bad rolling on those saves and FNP. Will played agressive, disembarking his Warriors early on. Will rolled well having two warrior survive combat to contest Crusade objective and two other Crons survinging your AP4 barrage Biovores to score Emperor's objective. Had the game continued to turn 5, you would have won (unless you roll poorly again).
Yeah, and that is the problem I have found with playing nids. You don't always get the luxery of finishing your games due to time constrainsts. I remember a blogg by I believe MVBrandt back in 2012 where he played his nids in a big tournie and had issues with completing games as well...though he was playing some 2 squads of gargoyles and 3 Tervigons. He still placed in the top 4 IIRC.
Automatically Appended Next Post: ...and were you using a pivot trick with your Tervigons when you deployed sideways? Or were you just maximizing cover to your gribblies?
And I don't want to say tough loss: I feel proud of the kid and I am sure that he got a real kick out of going toe-2-toe with a champ and emerging victorious.
SabrX wrote: Game 1, Ouch! Losing that Flyrant at the top of turn 2 is a devastating blow! Bad rolling on those saves and FNP. Will played agressive, disembarking his Warriors early on. Will rolled well having two warrior survive combat to contest Crusade objective and two other Crons survinging your AP4 barrage Biovores to score Emperor's objective. Had the game continued to turn 5, you would have won (unless you roll poorly again).
Yeah, had we continued on, I would have had the better chance to win. Alas, in a tournament, when it's over, it's over. Nothing much you can do but to re-adjust your expectations and move on.
Eldarain wrote: Crazy turn of events after he forgot about two powerful units.
Yeah, to to think that he didn't even really need them to do all that damage!
Tough loss. Even more ridiculous that he didn't use his annihilation barges for 2 turns. Might have gotten ugly if those started on the board.
I know that most tournaments run low on terrain, but wow was that field barren. I suppose you were getting your armor saves still, but there was absolutely nowhere to hide there.
I've greatly enjoyed the reports you've made Jy2, please keep them coming!
Though I'm quite curious as I'm hoping to become more competitive, why the Biovores? I attempted a three game spree of utilizing four of them and I was constantly disappointed. Has the pinning proven that essential, and do they typically earn back their worth? In your first game it appeared to be constant disappointment with them, which to me doesn't seem far off from logical prediction given the nature of scatter dice.
Eldercaveman wrote: I've pre-exalted this thread, in anticipation of your batreps, because we all know it is going to be an absolute, wargamers wet dream.
Hahaha....not sure whether to beam with joy or to douse you with some cold water.
CaptKaruthors wrote: Good grief...come on people. Drop the crutch of using Aegis lines. Just about every army had one. I guess we forgot to adapt to the terrain given to us in games. Kudos to the people that left them at home. Bravo to Elizabeth on her undefeated record. Hopefully, other gamer women will be motivated to play more. She's a great ambassador to the game for women.
The Aegis can be good in the right army. However, for most other armies, it isn't really necessary. I think that's what we are seeing here. Some armies really benefit from the Aegis (like gunline armies) and for others, it is truly a waste of points.
Yeah, I definitely think that she's a good role model for female gamers everywhere. She's highly skilled, her army is very nicely done and she has a very good attitude. Those are the type of people that we need in this hobby.
Cilithan wrote: Great pictures and some awesome armies. Must have been a blast. Seeing all this makes me want to create a display board! Then again, that's what I've been saying for a few years now...
Who knows, maybe for the next Dutch GT.
Thnx for the pics.
Cilithan
Thanks. Yeah, I definitely had a blast. You should go to a GT if you ever have the opportunity. It's a great way to make new friends and play against new people. As long as you go with the attitude that win, lose or draw, I'm going to have fun!
wyomingfox wrote: Man I am so jealous of Tomb Stalkers (appearance wise)...seriously, why can't my Trygons be modeled slithering on their stomachs...rather than walking on their rear 24/7.
I myself almost bought a tomb stalker recently. Those models are really cool and I'd love to add 1 or 2 to complement my wraiths.
djn wrote: Damn, unlucky dude. Looking forward to the rest of your reports but I kind of spoilt it for myself by checking the results on frontline gaming
Do you think a bit of complacency crept into this game? I know you had some horrible luck mind you.
Cheers for sharing!
No, I wasn't complacent. I was actually thinking of, young or not, smashing his army, but the dice just had other plans. In a tournament, I don't take it easy unless I'm already assured of a win. This was way too early in the game to be feeling that way.
Ouch was not expecting that result JY. That's what I meant in my pre tourney prediction. 1 bad game of dice and its over. Glad you went on to do well though after this it seemed(if I'm reading the results right, which I might not be). Still nice showing by the young pup! Even if he was taking 2 of the most hated armies of the past year haha!
...and were you using a pivot trick with your Tervigons when you deployed sideways? Or were you just maximizing cover to your gribblies?
And I don't want to say tough loss: I feel proud of the kid and I am sure that he got a real kick out of going toe-2-toe with a champ and emerging victorious.
I try to avoid that with my tervigon unless I absolutely have to. The reason why I deploy that way is mainly so that I can deploy my hive guards further up (while still getting cover from the tervigons) to maximimize their shooting range as well as to give cover to my other units, including my flyrants. However, I only deploy this way if I am going first or if my opponent doesn't have a lot of ranged AP2/3 shooting.
Now I'm never going to live it down at my LGS. My opponent can now boast that he beat a GT winner and I'd be forever known as the cocky bastard who lost to the kid. j.k.
bogalubov wrote: Tough loss. Even more ridiculous that he didn't use his annihilation barges for 2 turns. Might have gotten ugly if those started on the board.
I know that most tournaments run low on terrain, but wow was that field barren. I suppose you were getting your armor saves still, but there was absolutely nowhere to hide there.
Actually, terrain wasn't that bad. There was a a large LOS-blocking, impassable terrain between the 2 armies where I could have hid my army. I just happened to play very aggressively with my flyrants in order to try to get First Blood and wipe out 1 or 2 of his units. If anything, I actually felt that terrain was in my favor, not his.
Cieged wrote: I've greatly enjoyed the reports you've made Jy2, please keep them coming!
Though I'm quite curious as I'm hoping to become more competitive, why the Biovores? I attempted a three game spree of utilizing four of them and I was constantly disappointed. Has the pinning proven that essential, and do they typically earn back their worth? In your first game it appeared to be constant disappointment with them, which to me doesn't seem far off from logical prediction given the nature of scatter dice.
Biovores give the bugs some long range reach. They played a larger part in some of my other games, wiping out troops on far objectives where I had no other way to get to. They also give me some anti-infantry shooting as well as makes it tougher for those flamer/screamer daemon armies. Either drop, shoot and get plastered by my biovores or drop and spread out, thus losing 1 turn of shooting.
Out of 5 games, I'd say in 1 game the biovores do really well, in 3 games they do alright and they will fare badly in 1 game. But due to their relatively cheap costs, they will in most cases easily make back their points. And I would say that they have been MVP's in many of my games, killing scoring units on objectives and pinning important units at key turns to swing the game in my favor or perhaps to even win it outright.
Overall, I've switched to biovores ever since 5th Edition (where I used to run trygons and dakkafexes) and have never looked back since. The biovores will consistently perform in 4 out of 5 games (just my guesstimate).
Eldarain wrote: Do you try and get LoS for your biovores in most games Jim? It seems like you've had a great deal of success with them.
I've found the full scatter rules for out of sight barrages make them really lackluster when I've hidden them behind terrain.
Yeah, I actually do in most of my games. Only if my opponent has guns that can insta-kill them or if I am firing indirectly in order to try to snipe particular models do I hide them out of LOS. Otherwise, I always try to get LOS with my biovores.
Chancetragedy wrote: Ouch was not expecting that result JY. That's what I meant in my pre tourney prediction. 1 bad game of dice and its over. Glad you went on to do well though after this it seemed(if I'm reading the results right, which I might not be). Still nice showing by the young pup! Even if he was taking 2 of the most hated armies of the past year haha!
Yeah, he played well against me and ended up doing decent. And necrons is still 1 of the most hated armies of the recent year.
Yea tough loss with the failed saves though you have to admit your initial rolls for your powers seemed crazy! I can't believe that batch of biomancy powers! Then he forgets 2 annihilation barges!!! I think the luck swings both ways here but I agree you played the game you needed to and sometimes thats all you can do.
Now if you want to discuss luck then how about that final game! I think it is safe to say she would have beat any player she was pitted against in the final round with dice like that!
Heck I wish I could have attended! So I am still envious One of these days I'll just go for it, but it's a long voyage from rural Maine
Red Corsair wrote: Yea tough loss with the failed saves though you have to admit your initial rolls for your powers seemed crazy! I can't believe that batch of biomancy powers! Then he forgets 2 annihilation barges!!! I think the luck swings both ways here but I agree you played the game you needed to and sometimes thats all you can do.
Now if you want to discuss luck then how about that final game! I think it is safe to say she would have beat any player she was pitted against in the final round with dice like that!
Heck I wish I could have attended! So I am still envious One of these days I'll just go for it, but it's a long voyage from rural Maine
Good rep man!
Yeah, I thought I would clobber my opponent. I had some awesome psychic powers. There was a big LOS-blocking terrain in the center and my opponent had no real ranged shooting or any scary cc-threats. The list, the matchup and the experience belonged to me. The only thing he had on his side was a little luck, but apparently, that was enough.
I forgot about those AB's also.
As for Liz, you need skill, the right matchup and a little luck sometimes to get you over that hump. In her case, she got all 3. Her army was a bad matchup for Alan (even though he got some good psychic powers) and with her luck, he just couldn't overcome. This tournament was just hers for the taking.
Dude, you should take a road trip for the next BAO tournament. Take a vacation and come see the west coast! It's only 6 hours away.
That is a tough one to swallow. Though if I have to pick a time to lose a game I would rather it be the first then the last. After losing that first game you kind of play more loose and with less pressure. In ways it becomes more enjoyable or in some cases if you have a long drive its not bad to cut out early. Nothing worse then losing in the finals and getting the old it was a good run but nothing to show for it. In addition, I cant stand when the odds are not necessarily going against the norm but when they go flat out crazy it kind of takes things away from the game.
Example: In my GT game two I apologized to my opponent for my wraiths when they took a charge from an ork blob and made every save without taking a wound . Nothing I did there to make that happen. Just the dice happened to agree with me staying there.
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #2 - The Scouring (4pts) & Purge the Alien (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #2, Purge the Alien is worth 3-points and the Scouring worth 4-points.
I cannot take his army lightly. Guards are always dangerous and he's got the tools to really hurt me. Fortunately for me, we are playing an objectives-based mission. I should be able to take the Scouring and it is the Primary. Unfortunately for me, it is also Victory Points. That mission has a tendency to discourage me from producing gants. Also, what's going to hurt is that he has a lot of blast weapons....not so good for an army that likes to stay together like mine. I'm also going to have some problems trying to crack those leman russes so I just may have to ignore them. On the other hand, he may have problems against my flyrants as well, especially if I can get Iron Arm. I think that if he can down my flyrants early, then he has a chance to take this. Otherwise, he has no chance.
His 2 chimeras searchlight my gargoyles and my Warlord.
Shooting then kills 7 gargoyles and 1 biovore (from a scattering leman russ shot) as well as taking off 3W from my Warlord.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
I cast my psychic powers - Endurance on both flyrants. I would continue to cast whatever psychic powers I can every turn.
Flyrants swoop.
The rest of my army advances. Both tervgions spawn gants. One of them runs out.
Flyrant takes out 1 chimera for First Blood. The explosion combined with shooting from the other flyrant takes out 7 veterans. They would then fall back.
IG: 0, Tyranids: 1
The bugs run.
Imperial Guards 2
Spoiler:
IG movement. 1 vendetta comes in. The fleeing plasma-vets regroup.
His shooting kills 7 gants, 3 gargoyles and put 1W on my tervigon.
But more importantly, he fails to do anything to my flyrants. Between the vendetta, his 2 infantry squads, the 2 veterans and his 2 chimeras, he manages only to ground one of my flyrants. However, I get really hot with my FNP saves and make all the crucial ones (against the grounding and his vendetta lascannons).
Man, I dodged a bullet there. One of those flyrants (my Warlord) should have gone down.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
The bugs continue to advance. The Doom fails to come in. However, the gants come in and swarm towards one of my objectives.
My Warlord glides and prepares to assault. The other flyrant swoops.
In my shooting phase, the swooping flyrant shoots down his vendetta from the rear. 3-4 of his PCS dies in the explosion and they get pinned. My Warlord shoots down 4 guardsmen from his blob squad and biovores take out 3 veterans.
IG: 0, Tyranids: 2
My Warlord then assaults (BTW, he has Warp Speed on).
He then runs down the unit in a sweeping advance.
IG: 0, Tyranids: 3
Imperial Guards 3
Spoiler:
The other vendetta comes in. Bye, bye Warlord.
IG movement.
He finally gets his first VP and Warlord at the same time.
IG: 1, Tyranids: 3
He then focuses on my gargoyles. I go-to-ground (they were out of synapse) and I only lose 3. 1 hive guard also takes 1W from a scattering shot.
Gargoyles would then fail morale and flee....only to fall back into Synapse range, thus automatically regrouping next turn.
He cannot hurt nor ground my other flyrant.
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
Tervigons advance. I am going after his chimera. My gribblies swarm the objectives.
The flyrant goes after his veterans.
Flyrant shoots at his veterans. They would then fail morale and fall back, thus denying my flyrant the charge.
Tervigon and gants assault the chimera.
I blow up the transport, killing 4 gants and 5 veterans in the process.
IG: 1, Tyranids: 4
Imperial Guards 4
Spoiler:
Veterans regroup. Vendetta goes after my flyrant. His CCS goes for the objective (his Warlord is scoring due to his Warlord trait).
My opponent manages to bring down my other flyrant.
IG: 2, Tyranids: 4
At this point, my opponent concedes. I've got 4 of the Scouring objectives to his 1 or 2. I'm beating him on VP's and will probably get more with the Doom yet to come in. There is no way for him to take this one. He is just content about killing both of my flyrants and claiming my Warlord. Tyranids win 10-1.
Crushing Victory by Hive Fleet Pandora!!!
Thanks, Matt, you really were an awesome opponent. Kept your positive attitude despite the dice going against you.
"I can do well if I get Iron Arm!"
<doesn't roll Iron Arm>
"... Crapstick."
I hate that feeling. I love Psychic Choir when it works, but when I end up with Haemorrhage on 4 guys - even after dropping 2 Haems for Smite - I know the game is just going to not go well.
I also took my first loss (second round) from an unassuming Necron infantry list...tough break. Can't believe he forgot his Annihilation Barges! Tesla Destructors are my most reliable Tyranid-killers when I'm playing Necrons.
Strong comeback in game 2. Fun read too, I've always liked to see bugs swarming toward an entrenched Guard army. Looking forward to game 3...I promise I won't spoil anything.
Nice to see things turned around for you JY2. I gotta say though that match up was not the one that the IG plaeyer was hoping for, betweem flying monstrous creatures and the doom having the potenital to suck up a whole bunch of guardsman. When he failed to kill your warlord on the first turn and couldn't take out either one on the next turn I think that really sealed the deal. I believe had he killed off both flyrants before they got to his lines the game would have been much closer to even, so to speak, as your gants would have been trying to tarpit his guardsman and your tervigons trying to take out his leman russes, still would be an uphill battle for him but he'd have a better chance to possibly win(LC from vendettas taking out a tervigon or a leman russ taking out a whole unit of guants etc.) Nice battle report as always and am looking forward to the next one
Solid second game. Good recovery after losing your first game. Flyrants played a key role being fire magnets, survivng turn 2 IG shooting, and wreaking on IG infantry.
whigwam wrote: I also took my first loss (second round) to an unsuspecting Necron infantry list...tough break. Can't believe he forgot his Annihilation Barges! Tesla Destructors are my most reliable Tyranid-killers when I'm playing Necrons.
Strong comeback in game 2. Fun read too, I've always liked to see bugs swarming toward an entrenched Guard army. Looking forward to game 3...I promise I won't spoil anything.
Did that Necron list have 46 Necron Warriors, 3 Barges, Imotekh, Destroyer Lord, Wraiths, and Aegis? I may have played against it.
Yeah, that's the one. 4 of his Wraiths walked through 18 of my Screamers like they were nothing. I've woken up in a cold sweat yelling "SCREAMERS, NOOO" every night since.
Eldercaveman wrote: If Doom hurts him self with MSS, does he regain wounds for causing wounds...... Paradox?
Lol. Never thought about it that way.
However, he was at S8-9 at the time, so any successful unsaved wounds would have insta-gibbed himself.
Tomb King wrote: That is a tough one to swallow. Though if I have to pick a time to lose a game I would rather it be the first then the last. After losing that first game you kind of play more loose and with less pressure. In ways it becomes more enjoyable or in some cases if you have a long drive its not bad to cut out early. Nothing worse then losing in the finals and getting the old it was a good run but nothing to show for it. In addition, I cant stand when the odds are not necessarily going against the norm but when they go flat out crazy it kind of takes things away from the game.
Example: In my GT game two I apologized to my opponent for my wraiths when they took a charge from an ork blob and made every save without taking a wound . Nothing I did there to make that happen. Just the dice happened to agree with me staying there.
That is true. It'll take some of the pressure away. Also, your opponent for the next match will be a little easier. Thus, your entire schedule may be slightly easier. Though for me, I'd rather play the tough, hard matches over the easier ones.
Yeah, sometimes when the dice are too extreme (esp. for my opponent), I feel kind of bad, like in my game #2. Game #2 was almost the complete reversal of game #1. Because when the dice are that extreme, it isn't really you beating your opponent. Rather, it is the dice.
rigeld2 wrote: "I can do well if I get Iron Arm!"
<doesn't roll Iron Arm>
"... Crapstick."
I hate that feeling. I love Psychic Choir when it works, but when I end up with Haemorrhage on 4 guys - even after dropping 2 Haems for Smite - I know the game is just going to not go well.
That's why you shouldn't rely too much on those psychic powers. If you don't get the powers that you would like, then you're just going to have to improvise. Nids can still do well without the powers, though the powers do make it much easier for them.
I way I look at it, psychic powers are just a bonus. The foundation of the army must be solid in order for your army to be a true TAC army. That is, your army must be able to function properly no matter what type of psychic powers you get. If it can't do that - if it is too reliant on its psychic prowess in order to compete - then it isn't truly balanced.
Red Corsair wrote: I love that the best powers were not necessarily a '6' and that iron arm is a '1' it is ironic that you start a game hoping to roll 1's lol
It is somewhat counter-intuitive, I admit, but then so are Leadership tests. And who knows, there are probably players out there who think Haemorrhage (the '6') is an awesome power.
Haha, woops! Sorry if I spilled the beans early, Jim, didn't mean to steal your thunder!
No worries, man. It's all good.
Your annoucement kind of caught me by surprise. I really wasn't expecting it. But then when you said "my arch-rival...."
whigwam wrote: I also took my first loss (second round) from an unassuming Necron infantry list...tough break. Can't believe he forgot his Annihilation Barges! Tesla Destructors are my most reliable Tyranid-killers when I'm playing Necrons.
Strong comeback in game 2. Fun read too, I've always liked to see bugs swarming toward an entrenched Guard army. Looking forward to game 3...I promise I won't spoil anything.
Yeah, necrons continue to be under-estimated, even when they aren't using their most powerful builds. I can kind of see why Alex Fennel does so well with his pink-crons. On paper, they don't look very scary...but the synergy they have with each other and when run by a competent general makes them really a formidable enemy.
Dezstiny wrote: Nice to see things turned around for you JY2. I gotta say though that match up was not the one that the IG plaeyer was hoping for, betweem flying monstrous creatures and the doom having the potenital to suck up a whole bunch of guardsman. When he failed to kill your warlord on the first turn and couldn't take out either one on the next turn I think that really sealed the deal. I believe had he killed off both flyrants before they got to his lines the game would have been much closer to even, so to speak, as your gants would have been trying to tarpit his guardsman and your tervigons trying to take out his leman russes, still would be an uphill battle for him but he'd have a better chance to possibly win(LC from vendettas taking out a tervigon or a leman russ taking out a whole unit of guants etc.) Nice battle report as always and am looking forward to the next one
Agreed. Turn 2 was a make-it-or-break-it turn for IG. Break my flyrants and it would have been an uphill battle for me. Fail to do so and I knew this game would be mine. The flyrants are so very important to my list and are the focus of my offense.
wyomingfox wrote: Did you remeber your "It will not Die Rolls" from endurance? Noticed at the end of Turn 1 and 2 you still had 3 wounds on your Warlord.
...and dammit I just realized I lost my Dakka World Wide Campaign Signature. Grrrr.
Edit: Also just curious, but were you able to get some cover saves from his own Aeigis Line seeing how far back some of his guys were?
Yeah, I remembered. Didn't make them, though the way my FNP was going, whew....
No, didn't use the Aegis cover saves because it never really came up. Plasmas never hit and I saved against the lascannons (with FNP).
Solid second game. Good recovery after losing your first game. Flyrants played a key role being fire magnets, survivng turn 2 IG shooting, and wreaking on IG infantry.
Yeah, they always do, the flyrants. That's why they need cover, Endurance and possibly Iron Arm. A flyrant with all 3 can really wreck house.
Reecius wrote: Thanks for taking all those pics, Jim! I was going to but just flat didn't have time.
You're welcome. I quite enjoy taking all those pictures.
Alex, also known as whigwam here on dakka, brought a very good and very nasty daemon army. He won the Feast of Blades GT with his Tzeentch/Nurgle daemon army. I was hoping to be able to play against him in the tournament and was thrilled when I found out he was my Game #3 opponent. Alex won his first game and then he came up to a little snag in his game #2 against necrons....much in the same way that I came up to a little snag in my first game against necrons. So going into this matchup, we were both 1-1. I was hoping to play him in the later rounds (like in, say, Game #7), but since we were both out of the running already, I'll take this matchup in any rounds. So it's GT winner versus GT winner. No matter who wins, I'm going to relish and enjoy this game.
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #3 - The Relic (4pts) & Big Guns Never Tire (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #3, Big Guns Never Tire is worth 3-points and The Relic worth 4-points.
The matchup usually boils down to what psychic powers I get (I need Endurance against his army) and also how much gants my tervigons can spawn. If I can spawn a healthy amount of gants, then it's going to be a tough fight for the daemons. Why? Because gants will screen off his screamers, absorb the Overwatch of his flamers and give me the volume-of-attacks that I will need against his army. If my tervigons run dry early, then my opponent will have the advantage instead.
I have another advantage and that is my flyrants. My opponent really has no way to deal with my flyrants if I keep them in the air. He will only be able to do anything to them after they finish an assault (since they will be on the ground then). Also, with my flyrants, there will be no where for his troops to hide. At least he isn't bringing the minimal 5-man troop units. His troops will be much more durable than other daemon builds. On the other hand, with the screamer slash attacks, my opponent should be able to get First Blood first. Then he will have a slight advantage in this game.
Overall, I am looking forwards to this matchup against a top-notch opponent and a top-notch army.
He drops his screamers a little more aggressively.
The flamers and pink horrors spread out.
Both units of screamers turbo-boost over my gargoyles and wipe them out with Slash Attacks. My opponent claims First Blood.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
And I am on those screamers like a shark smelling blood (after casting my obligatory psychic powers, of course, including Enfeeble on both units of screamers). My tervigon spawns a very heathly 15 gants without running out.
I split off my flyrants and sic 1 after each unit of screamers. My right tervigon spawns 10 gants. I will reserve my biovores for this unit of screamers.
The screamers must die because their mobility is just too dangerous.
Focus-fire wipes out 5 of the 2W screamers, despite their 4+ turbo-boost cover.
On the other flank, I wipe out 4 screamers.
Then it's off to assault (BTW, my flyrant is at T7).
The gribblies swarm the screamers.
And I wipe them out.
Because my gants were out of range of my tervigon, I only kill 1 screamer here. I actually forget about Enfeeble in combat, wounding the screamers on 5's instead of on 4's. In any case, my gants cannot pile into combat and thus just consolidate.
I know my opponent has got to be concerned now. I've practically taken out 2 of his heavy-hitting units in exchange for only 1 unit of gargoyles.
Daemons 2
Spoiler:
My opponent decides that he's got to play aggressively at this point. His flamers land on target.
His screamers scatter into terrain and he takes 2W from dangerous terrain tests.
His Warlord's unit comes in.
Flamers advance.
His other unit of flamers wipe out my unit of 15 gants.
The screamers turbo over and wipe out another 1 unit of gants.
I believe his strategy currently is to go after my scoring units.
Finally, in assault, my flyrant kills another 1 screamer.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
The Doom comes in.
I go after his flamers, who gets Enfeebled. Fortunately for my opponent, I fail to Enfeeble his screamers as well. The tervigon runs out....but not before spawning another 15 gants.
My flyrant glides and prepares to assault. The other tervigon also runs out after spawning 13 gants.
My opponent is slightly more relieved as I have run out of gants. However, he's not going to like this turn.
Gants go after the screamers locked in combat with my flyrant.
After my shooting is done, I've wiped out 7 flamers and 6 screamers!!!
Flyrant then assaults and wipes out the last 2 screamers (of which 1 was already wounded).
Gants charge in and there is only 1 screamer left (with only 1W left).
Finally, hive guards charge the flamer and he survives with 1W left as well.
Daemons 3
Spoiler:
His last unit of flamers fail to come in.
Flamers go for the last hurrah.
Plagues go after the Doom. His Warlord goes to join the other unit of plagues and the pink horrors get away from the Doom.
My opponent catches his only break. He flames the tervigon, wiping out 1 unit of gants in the process. Then out of 8 flame attacks (wounding on 4+'s), he manages to wound my tervigon 7 times! I then fail 6 FNP saves!!! So in 1 mighty shooting phase, he wipes out 1 unit of gants and my tervigons as well. The ensuing explosion kills another 5 gants.
Wow....maybe my opponent does have a chance, however slim, after all.
The plagues assault the Doom. They cause 2W and the Doom kills 2 plagues in return, thus regenerating those 2W back.
My flyrant finally finishes off the screamer.
Finally, my hive guards finish off the lone flamer as well.
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
His flamers won't survive this turn. I Enfeeble them.
Both flyrants swoop and go after his Warlord.
His Warlord survives with 1W left. However, he loses 5 plagues from Look-Out-Sirs.
The flamers survive my shooting, losing only 4 and taking 1W on a model.
Now will they survive assault? I charge in with the small unit of gants first and it gets reduced to just 1 model left from Overwatch. I then safely charge in with the rest of my army.
The Doom kills another plague in assault and I believe he causes 1 unsaved wound on the Doom as well.
Daemons 4
Spoiler:
Time is running out. We just have an abbreviated turn to see what we can do.
He drops his last unit of flamers and they scatter away from my biovores. I have 2 scoring units on the objective (both biovores). He can only kill 1.
In the worst case scenario, I can move my gants over to take that objective as well. I still have bottom of 4.
I'm contesting his objective, with 2 flyrants that can easily get to either of his objectives.
I also have my Big Guns objective. So I have 2 objectives and he will have none (not with my flyrants there).
It was debatable whether I could reach the relic next turn (I could have definitely done it in 2 turns) so we just play it as a No on the Relic.
Finally, I would easily get Linebreaker and Warlord on my turn.
So I take the Secondary (Big Guns Never Tire) as well as Linebreaker and Warlord. My opponent takes First Blood and Linebreaker (his flamers).
Well played on your part Jy2, when I saw the Daemon list I figured you had this one.
Tyranids are a hard matchup for Daemons in general - I cannot speak for the new codex yet -Players who ran the max Screamers/Flamers are asking to lose to this matchup - and the list makes me die a bit on the inside. The reason being it makes some players feel like it is brutally overpowered by crushing them (mainly Marines) or - in the case of running into a list like this one - pretty much folds over and dies.
I am also going to go on the record saying that Daemons need to be played aggressively across the board or conservatively across the board. Dropping Screamers in to slash attack a bunched up opponent while leaving all the other support elements at the far side of the board is just asking to be wrecked.
Hi, I'm the guy who got beat. As has been noted, Tyranids are (or were) a pretty tough matchup for Daemons. Facing them on the Relic made things doubly worse. So I had a pretty desperate strategy. My plan had been to try to tie the relic, tie the primary, and win with First Blood and Linebreaker. So pretty much everything hung on 7 Plaguebearers and my Herald of Nurgle not giving up Slay the Warlord to Doom or a Flyrant.
I knew I was sending the Screamers to their death, but they were intended to have bought me 2+ turns of tied-up Flyrants. Forgetting Gants are I4 and totally underestimating Nid Firepower shot that plan to pieces. If the Flyrants hadn't broke free, turn 2 I could drop in, occupy the middle of the board, and maybe even have a play for the Relic. If not, I could at least keep Jim off of it. But obviously it didn't go that way. Very well played, Jim. I'm glad we finally got a game in and that you were my last loss of the tournament (whew).
The Screamer/Flamer list may have been a hammer, but it's not like it was inflexible. It could handle elite armies, horde armies, gunlines, heavy vehicles, light vehicles, Flyers-- just about everything out there. But I could never really figure where to aim it when I faced Tyranids. Like I'd mentioned to jy2 a couple days before the event, I really wish I'd had a chance to practice this matchup more. I could've been persuaded to make edits to my list to handle even something as rare as Tyranids, but it didn't seem to be a problem I could solve on paper.
calypso2ts wrote: Well played on your part Jy2, when I saw the Daemon list I figured you had this one.
Tyranids are a hard matchup for Daemons in general - I cannot speak for the new codex yet -Players who ran the max Screamers/Flamers are asking to lose to this matchup - and the list makes me die a bit on the inside. The reason being it makes some players feel like it is brutally overpowered by crushing them (mainly Marines) or - in the case of running into a list like this one - pretty much folds over and dies.
I am also going to go on the record saying that Daemons need to be played aggressively across the board or conservatively across the board. Dropping Screamers in to slash attack a bunched up opponent while leaving all the other support elements at the far side of the board is just asking to be wrecked.
Yeah, I agree. With daemons, I think it's better to go all or nothing. Either go all out aggressive or hold everything back and wait for reinforcements.
But what I didn't say in this report was that his pink horrors scattered away from the Comms (they would have probably been out even with a good run move). In order to use the comms, I believe you have to have a unit nearby. Thus, my opponent was forced to DS his flamer near his comms so that he can benefit from it next turn. I believe that had his horrors landed where he had wanted them, he would have played his flamers much more aggressively and probably given me a triple-threat attack along with the screamers. Reaching the comms was all the more important considering I got the Warlord trait that penalized him -1 on his reserves.
Daemons can still beat my tyranids. The key is to probably present more threats than what he did in this game...and then hope that my tervigons don't go crazy. If I were to play daemons in this game, I would have gone ultra-aggressive. That means 3 screamers and 2 flamers in my prefered wave. Slash the gribblies and rain warpfire on them (or the biovores) from the flamers as well.
Glad (but pretty unsurprised) to see Nids smack down old Daemons. They are one of the very few armies Daemons didn't have a good answer for.
I'm also happy we won't have to see the Screamer/Flamer builds anymore. Though they weren't unbeatable, they certainly were the "easy button" of 40k. Good riddance!
But what I didn't say in this report was that his pink horrors scattered away from the Comms (they would have probably been out even with a good run move).
That is a straight up misplay in that case. Since you can DS the Horrors first, then if you miss too badly, drop everything else further back and Turbo Boost the screamers onto the Comms relay...or my preferred solution which is to run a unit of Cultists behind that Aegis with a Sorcerer in base with the comms.
IDK I thought for sure he would have gone or the Biovores and gone up 3-0 turn one due to big guns, not sure I understand wasting expensive screamers on gargoyles (or do these bonus pints only count to BG?) . Your had -1 to his reserve and a comms relay, meaning he should have been able to keep his HQ off the board until turn 4 (maybe he did do this) and DS him conservatively away from the doom and the flayrants, either way it would be close but I think those early 3 points would have really helped, especially being able to deny your BG objective.
Good game though, I think skarbrand is looking better and better for this type of match in the new demons book, considering he can instant death stuff with his MELEE!
edited: Sorry didnt have demon books with me Still liking him more and more though!
whigwam wrote: Hi, I'm the guy who got beat. As has been noted, Tyranids are (or were) a pretty tough matchup for Daemons. Facing them on the Relic made things doubly worse. So I had a pretty desperate strategy. My plan had been to try to tie the relic, tie the primary, and win with First Blood and Linebreaker. So pretty much everything hung on 7 Plaguebearers and my Herald of Nurgle not giving up Slay the Warlord to Doom or a Flyrant.
I knew I was sending the Screamers to their death, but they were intended to have bought me 2+ turns of tied-up Flyrants. Forgetting Gants are I4 and totally underestimating Nid Firepower shot that plan to pieces. If the Flyrants hadn't broke free, turn 2 I could drop in, occupy the middle of the board, and maybe even have a play for the Relic. If not, I could at least keep Jim off of it. But obviously it didn't go that way. Very well played, Jim. I'm glad we finally got a game in and that you were my last loss of the tournament (whew).
The Screamer/Flamer list may have been a hammer, but it's not like it was inflexible. It could handle elite armies, horde armies, gunlines, heavy vehicles, light vehicles, Flyers-- just about everything out there. But I could never really figure where to aim it when I faced Tyranids. Like I'd mentioned to jy2 a couple days before the event, I really wish I'd had a chance to practice this matchup more. I could've been persuaded to make edits to my list to handle even something as rare as Tyranids, but it didn't seem to be a problem I could solve on paper.
Yeah, it makes a world of difference if you can get in a practice game against particular matchups, like my practice game between my bugs and daemons. I was probably more prepared to face your army than you were to face mine.
It's also easy to under-estimate the offensive capabilities of tyranids, especially when you don't take into consideration their psychic buffs/de-buffs. That's just how it is with some armies. Until you actually play against them run by a good general, it's hard to gauge their actual synergy.
Anyways, congrats. Despite the 2 early losses, whigwam would come back strong and go on to finish 5-2. I believe he also won Best Daemons? (Liz couldn't win Best Daemons because she won something better. )
JGrand wrote: Glad (but pretty unsurprised) to see Nids smack down old Daemons. They are one of the very few armies Daemons didn't have a good answer for.
I'm also happy we won't have to see the Screamer/Flamer builds anymore. Though they weren't unbeatable, they certainly were the "easy button" of 40k. Good riddance!
Great report as always.
I'm not familiar with the new daemon codex yet as I don't have their new codex yet, but from what I hear, they are probably going to be more balanced than the current Tzeentch power-builds. That's good, because competitive daemons need a little more variety.
But what I didn't say in this report was that his pink horrors scattered away from the Comms (they would have probably been out even with a good run move).
That is a straight up misplay in that case. Since you can DS the Horrors first, then if you miss too badly, drop everything else further back and Turbo Boost the screamers onto the Comms relay...or my preferred solution which is to run a unit of Cultists behind that Aegis with a Sorcerer in base with the comms.
I attribute that to under-estimating the bugs and wanting to get First Blood. My opponent had a gameplan. It just didn't work out the way he intended.
jy2 wrote:Anyways, congrats. Despite the 2 early losses, whigwam would come back strong and go on to finish 5-2. I believe he also won Best Daemons? (Liz couldn't win Best Daemons because she won something better. )
I did win Best Daemons (finished 18th overall)...on a technicality. But I'll take it. I would also agree that Daemons needed more variety. I'm as happy as anyone else here to see the two big, blue tentpoles (Flamers and Screamers) supplanted by an all-around better tent. And hey, both of those units are still entirely usable, while not being quite as "spammable." Good deal, I say!
Red Corsair wrote: IDK I thought for sure he would have gone or the Biovores and gone up 3-0 turn one due to big guns, not sure I understand wasting expensive screamers on gargoyles (or do these bonus pints only count to BG?) . Your had -1 to his reserve and a comms relay, meaning he should have been able to keep his HQ off the board until turn 4 (maybe he did do this) and DS him conservatively away from the doom and the flayrants, either way it would be close but I think those early 3 points would have really helped, especially being able to deny your BG objective.
Good game though, I think skarbrand is looking better and better for this type of match in the new demons book, considering he can instant death stuff with his MELEE!
edited: Sorry didnt have demon books with me Still liking him more and more though!
The biovores were a little tougher to get to as they were all the ways in the back. However, gargoyles will probably give his daemons more problems. They've got the volume-of-attacks necessary to hurt daemons and they've got the mobility to go after his troops or to react to his assaults. Overall, the gargoyles may be more dangerous than the biovores, at least that was probably how my opponent must have felt.
Can't wait to get the new daemon codex. Will probably get it today and then it's army-list-building we go.
jy2 wrote:Anyways, congrats. Despite the 2 early losses, whigwam would come back strong and go on to finish 5-2. I believe he also won Best Daemons? (Liz couldn't win Best Daemons because she won something better. )
I did win Best Daemons (finished 18th overall)...on a technicality. But I'll take it. I would also agree that Daemons needed more variety. I'm as happy as anyone else here to see the two big, blue tentpoles (Flamers and Screamers) supplanted by an all-around better tent. And hey, both of those units are still entirely usable, while not being quite as "spammable." Good deal, I say!
Yeah, can't wait to try out the new daemons. Originally, I was planning to go back to my grey knights after the BAO, but now it looks like they're going to have to wait. Next up, daemons and my fun-crons.
Heah JY2, just wanted to say thanks for all the Battle Reports. It is one thing for an experienced tournie player to type up a codex review, it is quite another to have someone develop numerous battle reports that details how nids function against numerous opponents.
Now if only we could get Jankith to post up his battle reports as he runs a different army list than yours . That or bribe you to play more matches against his nids ;D.
Budding nid players should also check up on Jifel's battle reports as well.
wyomingfox wrote: Heah JY2, just wanted to say thanks for all the Battle Reports. It is one thing for an experienced tournie player to type up a codex review, it is quite another to have someone develop numerous battle reports that details how nids function against numerous opponents.
Now if only we could get Jankith to post up his battle reports as he runs a different army list than yours . That or bribe you to play more matches against his nids ;D.
Budding nid players should also check up on Jifel's battle reports as well.
Should be quite a few of those in a bit! Think Monday. I can only hope I get them up to Jy2s level though, I admit he's the reason I even started writing Batreps!
@jy2: Great two wins, bummer about that round 1, but I'm glad to hear you took best Nids!
jy2 wrote:Anyways, congrats. Despite the 2 early losses, whigwam would come back strong and go on to finish 5-2. I believe he also won Best Daemons? (Liz couldn't win Best Daemons because she won something better. )
I did win Best Daemons (finished 18th overall)...on a technicality. But I'll take it. I would also agree that Daemons needed more variety. I'm as happy as anyone else here to see the two big, blue tentpoles (Flamers and Screamers) supplanted by an all-around better tent. And hey, both of those units are still entirely usable, while not being quite as "spammable." Good deal, I say!
The new daemons look really fun although at first glance it appears they will lack some serious consistency given all the random things that happen on a turn by turn basis.
jy2 wrote:Anyways, congrats. Despite the 2 early losses, whigwam would come back strong and go on to finish 5-2. I believe he also won Best Daemons? (Liz couldn't win Best Daemons because she won something better. )
I did win Best Daemons (finished 18th overall)...on a technicality. But I'll take it. I would also agree that Daemons needed more variety. I'm as happy as anyone else here to see the two big, blue tentpoles (Flamers and Screamers) supplanted by an all-around better tent. And hey, both of those units are still entirely usable, while not being quite as "spammable." Good deal, I say!
The new daemons look really fun although at first glance it appears they will lack some serious consistency given all the random things that happen on a turn by turn basis.
Honestly the random element is very much in the players control. Warp storm has almost no impact if you play a mono god or dual god army. The rewards are also fairly simple and are easy if you just want the basic weapon by default. I really don't see them being any more inconsistent then they are now considering they can deploy or deep strike and don't have the wonky demonic assault. I would actually claim they are very much more consistent.
wyomingfox wrote: Heah JY2, just wanted to say thanks for all the Battle Reports. It is one thing for an experienced tournie player to type up a codex review, it is quite another to have someone develop numerous battle reports that details how nids function against numerous opponents.
Now if only we could get Jankith to post up his battle reports as he runs a different army list than yours . That or bribe you to play more matches against his nids ;D.
Budding nid players should also check up on Jifel's battle reports as well.
Thanks. I've played my share of the bugs. Now it's time to give them a little rest. Both Janthkin and I are going to be exploring the new daemons codex (daemons + CSM for Janthkin). But I will continue to write my reports and I will get a game against Kevin again. The bugs, just like my crons, will show up once in a while though for the time being, it's going to be mainly chaos. I hope to provide as much insight with the new daemon codex as I have with the bugs.
And don't worry....we will have that bug on bug action one of these days.
Red Corsair wrote: You will enjoy the new demon codex for sure. It is very different but I see many ultra fast hard hitting combos with high volume of attacks.
Oh yeah. Had my first game today and absolutely loved the new dex. I actually bought the book and played with it right away. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of stuff but I love the feel of the new daemons. Now I've got 1 week to consume the codex before I play a real game next week (and perhaps my first official new daemon batrep).
Should be quite a few of those in a bit! Think Monday. I can only hope I get them up to Jy2s level though, I admit he's the reason I even started writing Batreps!
@jy2: Great two wins, bummer about that round 1, but I'm glad to hear you took best Nids!
Thanks. I've actually read some of your batreps on your blog and find them quite entertaining as well as informative. You've actually influenced my bugs as well. I took your advice to give my tervigons 3 psychic powers. And now I am contemplating giving the ymgarls a try again.
Regarding best bugs, I wasn't sure I would get it. After Day 1, I was 3-1. There were probably 2-3 undefeated tyranid players at that point, including Janthkin who was a perfect 4-0. Even in my last game (Game #7), there were 2 tyranid players on a table ahead of me (ironically, playing against each other). Thus, I was almost sure that one would end the day 6-1 and would get Best Bugs. Finding out that I actually won it was a surprise to me.
whigwam wrote: I did win Best Daemons (finished 18th overall)...
What did all the "Best Of" winners get as their prize?
k0v wrote: I think the "Best Of" winners got to wear "Bracelets of Russ" for 5 seconds before Reece took them back...
LOL. We each got a $50 Gift Certificate redeemable at Frontline Gaming. But to me, the G/C didn't really mattered compared to the fact that I was able to achieve something with my bugs.
The new daemons look really fun although at first glance it appears they will lack some serious consistency given all the random things that happen on a turn by turn basis.
That's something I'd be happy to find out. The "exploration" phase is always the fun part.
Honestly the random element is very much in the players control. Warp storm has almost no impact if you play a mono god or dual god army. The rewards are also fairly simple and are easy if you just want the basic weapon by default. I really don't see them being any more inconsistent then they are now considering they can deploy or deep strike and don't have the wonky demonic assault. I would actually claim they are very much more consistent.
If they didn't have some random effects, then they wouldn't be daemons. I guess I will find out soon enough how "consistent" they are.
I've actually played against Steve before. Back then, Steve, a member of Team Zero Comp, brought Space Wolves to the Golden Throne GT last year and I played against him in my game #3:
If he's playing against me, he must be 2-1 also. He is an ok player (and a very nice guy) but he isn't quite as devious a tactician as I am. I look at his list and there is nothing there that really scares me. I think this is going to be a tough, tough fight for my opponent.
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #4 - The Crusade (4pts) & The Emperor's Will (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #4, Crusade is worth 3-points and The Emperor's Will worth 4-points.
There is absolutely nothing here that I fear. I can deal with any of his units. His daemon allies will get clobbered if they get too close. His heldrakes won't be able to do enough damage except to my gribblies. Then next turn my flyrants will just fly past them to get rear shots against their vulnerable behinds. He doesn't have enough shooting to deal with my big guys, especially my flyrants. Honestly, I think that this is going to be a route.
Though the last time I felt that way in the tournament (Game #1), I lost. List is only 1/3 the battle. You've then got the skill of the general (another 1/3) and 1/3 luck as well. So assuming he isn't a tactical genius and luck is not too extreme....honestly, I think that this is going to be a route.
His Greater Unclean One and fiends come in. He deepstrikes his fiends conservatively into his own deployment zone (or perhaps they scattered into there).
Screamers deepstrike more aggressively (and unsupported as well).
I forget that his blastmasters ignore cover. Fortunately, he only manages to put 1W on my Warlord.
He also puts 1W on a tervigon, kills 1 gargoyle and insta-gibs 1 biovore.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
Tyranids cast their psychic powers and move out.
Flyrants swoop.
Shooting takes out 5 noise marines, including the Icon bearer.
I put 1W on the GUO.
Finally, the gargoyles shoot and assault the screamers.
I wipe them out for First Blood.
Chaos 2
Spoiler:
After seeing what my gargoyles did, he goes after them with his heldrake. Vector strike kills 2.
The other drake goes after my zoans but I make my saves against his vector strike.
His 2 plaguebearers also come in.
Fiends advance. Noise marines move up as well.
Focus-fire from his noise marines (including cover-ignoring blastmasters and his Chaos Lord's Brand) wipes out my gargoyles.
The other heldrake goes after my scoring unit but only kills 4. I am still in synapse range (my flyrant) and hence fearless.
Heldrake takes off another 1W from my tervigon (4W remaining) and roasts 5 gants.
Despite fleet, his fiends would fail their charge.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
Warlord prepares to assault his noise marines. The other flyrant swoops and gets ready to shoot down the heldrake.
Tervigon spawn 15 gants, who move into his drake's rear armor. I fail to hurt it with shooting, however.
My other tervigon spawn 9 gants and they go after the fiends. BTW, the tervigon is at T8 currently.
Gants spread out on objective. Biovores hide inside the ruins to get out of LOS.
The flyrant shoots down the helturkey. Biovores kill only 1 plaguebearer.
Shooting reduces the fiends to just 1 model left. I then charge it.
Finally, my Warlord shoots and assaults the noise marines.
The fiend gets wiped out.
Only 1 noise marine survives to tie up my Warlord.
I'd say my opponent is in a world of hurt right now. My tervigon and probably flyrant will be able to assault his noise marines next turn, and he doesn't have much offense left.
Chaos 3
Spoiler:
His heldrake vector strikes and kills 1 biovore.
Shooting kills 7 gants and puts 1W on my tervigon.
His plaguebearers then assault my hive guards. We draw combat with 1W each.
Finally, my Warlord finishes off his noise marines.
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
The End comes in....I mean, the Doom comes in.
I've got both tervigons and my flyrant going after his noise marines. Tervigon spawns 9 gants without rolling doubles.
My Warlord goes after his plaguebearers. I shoot down 1 only.
Spirit Leech and shooting takes out 6 noise marines, including his Icon.
And then, both tervigons assault.
With that, my opponent concedes.
I've got Crusade 2-0.
I've also got my Emperor's Will objective. He doesn't have his.
JY2: I see a trend of you going second. Did your opponents win the roll offs each time or did you request to go second. That gives you the last grab for objectives but at the expense of having to endure a shooting phase without your psychic buffs.
wyomingfox wrote: JY2: I see a trend of you going second. Did your opponents win the roll offs each time or did you request to go second. That gives you the last grab for objectives but at the expense of having to endure a shooting phase without your psychic buffs.
I don't remember exactly, but sometimes, they won and chose to go first and sometimes, I win and choose to go 2nd. I only choose to go 2nd on objectives games if my opponent's army isn't too shooty. If he has good long-range shooting, then obviously I would want to go first. If he has a good flyer alpha-strike (i.e. lots of flyers coming in on T2), then I would also want to go 1st.
I believe in Game #1, I chose to go 2nd. In Game #2, my opponent won the initiative and chose to go first. Game #3, I believe I won and went 2nd. In this game, my opponent chose to go first (which was fine because I wanted to go 2nd anyways).
Traceoftoxin wrote: Going second with Tyranids is such a massive liability. I don't imagine he chose to do so.
It really depends on the matchup. Usually, you would want to go first against alpha-strike armies, drop pod armies or gunline armies (or even against flyer armies which will alpha-strike on T2). Otherwise, I actually prefer to go 2nd in objectives games where your opponent can't really hurt you from a distance.
Ugh...as a Tyranid player, it's always painful to see Zoanthropes with Smite, Haemorrhage, and Life Leech.
Is there a scenario in which you would keep their book powers? Warp Blast is still nasty against MEQ, and Warp Lance is still decent against vehicles and instagibbing HQs.
Also, I'm just going from memory, so I might be completely wrong on this one...can the Chaos Lord get 3 different weapons (brand, melta, claw)? I believe he only comes with a bolt pistol and cc weapon to trade in.
jy2 wrote: It really depends on the matchup. Usually, you would want to go first against alpha-strike armies, drop pod armies or gunline armies (or even against flyer armies which will alpha-strike on T2). Otherwise, I actually prefer to go 2nd in objectives games where your opponent can't really hurt you from a distance.
So 75% of armies then?
But seriously, most armies do have the ability to pick up a flyrant turn 1, so making sure he's in the air is clinch, as you know. On the off chance your facing someone with very little first turn firepower and/or fliers, I concur on taking second.
Poor chaos player. I bet his army would crush a lot of space marine armies with all that AP3 ignores cover. I bet he had zero idea what he was in for against your army though.
Edit: also I'm constantly surprised by how people can just toss squads around unsupported into enemy lines. Having put the screamers closer to his other troops may have helped immensely(probably not but you know what I mean)
Siphen wrote: Ugh...as a Tyranid player, it's always painful to see Zoanthropes with Smite, Haemorrhage, and Life Leech.
Is there a scenario in which you would keep their book powers? Warp Blast is still nasty against MEQ, and Warp Lance is still decent against vehicles and instagibbing HQs.
Also, I'm just going from memory, so I might be completely wrong on this one...can the Chaos Lord get 3 different weapons (brand, melta, claw)? I believe he only comes with a bolt pistol and cc weapon to trade in.
Probably if I am playing against land raider-spam.
They're a support unit so I always give them book powers in order to try to get Endurance or Enfeeble. And if not, then I can always swap out for Smite.
In any case, having the zoanthropes allows me to play much more aggressively with my tervigons as I don't need to babysit my backcourt units with them.
I believe the Brand you can buy separately, no matter what the other 2 weapons were. He can still use only 1 shooting attack, however.
Well played on game 3 against the Daemons. Daemons put up a good fight, but were overwhelmed by the number of units and enfeeble at your disposal.
I look forward to seeing how your list does against Helldrakes.
Thanks. That daemon army would be absolutely brutal for anyone else to play against. Unfortunately for my opponent, he drew the one army that actually matches up well against his army - tyranids. Still, it isn't an easy fight for my bugs unless I get the right powers and my gant-spawning is strong. Fortunately for me, I did and they were.
jy2 wrote: It really depends on the matchup. Usually, you would want to go first against alpha-strike armies, drop pod armies or gunline armies (or even against flyer armies which will alpha-strike on T2). Otherwise, I actually prefer to go 2nd in objectives games where your opponent can't really hurt you from a distance.
So 75% of armies then?
But seriously, most armies do have the ability to pick up a flyrant turn 1, so making sure he's in the air is clinch, as you know. On the off chance your facing someone with very little first turn firepower and/or fliers, I concur on taking second.
Lol. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Also, sometimes you have to take into consideration other factors....like LOS-blocking terrain where your flyrants can hide, night-fight and the range of the opponent (i.e. 24" for grey knights and necrons). If I can get away with going 2nd in an objectives game, I usually try to. But more often than not, I'd probably want to go first.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Chancetragedy wrote: Poor chaos player. I bet his army would crush a lot of space marine armies with all that AP3 ignores cover. I bet he had zero idea what he was in for against your army though.
Edit: also I'm constantly surprised by how people can just toss squads around unsupported into enemy lines. Having put the screamers closer to his other troops may have helped immensely(probably not but you know what I mean)
Yeah, putting the screamers there was just a mistake on his part. Though I suspect his fiends were supposed to support his screamers as a counter-charge unit. They just happened to scatter back into his deployment zone.
But overall, I don't think he knew what he was getting into against my army.
Wondering why he didn't focus both turkeys on taking out the non-iron armed Flyrant. At 36 " and you having advanced up the board, it is pretty easy to VS and still flame something else.
wyomingfox wrote: Wondering why he didn't focus both turkeys on taking out the non-iron armed Flyrant. At 36 " and you having advanced up the board, it is pretty easy to VS and still flame something else.
Because of a weird FAQ by the BAO. This was up there with flyers being able to shoot straight down and with vehicles being able to deny objectives.
From the BAOFAQ's:
Flyers and Flying Monstrous Creatures
• Any attacks or special abilities that can cause damage (i.e. hits, wounds and/or vehicle damage) without rolling to hit (e.g. an Ork Weirdboy’s Zzap psychic power, Imotekh’s Lord of the Storm or Njal’s Lord of Tempests special rules) have no effect on Zooming Flyers and Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures. This is true even if the attacking unit has the Skyfire special rule. [pg. 3, W40KRB FAQ]
Before the match, we double-checked with one of the judges and he confirmed this restriction. Both of my flyrants were swooping at the time.
I have a question for you jy2. Because it seems your list is pretty balanced but if you were to have something killed first turn that would throw you off your game what would it be? A flyrant? A tervigon? It's so hard to figure out target priority in your list and I very rarely get to play against nids. It seems people go after your gargoyles a lot and I can't imagine that's always the right choice...
That's a straight-up blown call by the judge. While, IMO, the BAOFAQ is completely correct and consistent with the 40k rules, the Vector Strike errata (on page 1 of the main rulebook FAQ) specifically and explicitly allows Vector Strike to hit Flyers. Ah well, mistakes happen.
The Burning Brand does require the swap of a weapon; which is why you can't get both it and the Black Mace on a Daemon Prince; because he only comes with one weapon to swap. However the bike does come with twin-linked bolters, which are a weapon and many people believe are legit to swap out as one of the model's weapons for a purchased weapon. And that swap was explicitly ruled to be legal in the BAOFAQ:
Lol. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Also, sometimes you have to take into consideration other factors....like LOS-blocking terrain where your flyrants can hide, night-fight and the range of the opponent (i.e. 24" for grey knights and necrons). If I can get away with going 2nd in an objectives game, I usually try to. But more often than not, I'd probably want to go first.
Just be careful not to make that assumption all the time. Letting a 24"gunline army like Necs and us GK can turn around to bite you hard because it allows us to get in range of your army. To have total board control range to shoot at you for the rest of the game, if we have to move to you, is a risky strategy in an objective game. Sometimes it's that extra movement up that makes the difference between a win and a loss because you forced us to move in range of your army ie now we can shoot at your army (the backfield campers that shouldn't be getting shot at) in addition to your frontal force if the strategic value of wiping that gant squad staking you off the emperors will objective in the back for say is worth the risk loss of the purifier squad etc.. Worrying about tide of grimmles and flyrants and not the biovores and gant obj holders in the back should be 24" armies main priority but given a break in the tide the game may really turn in our favor. Jus a little something to think about, hope you take it to heart
Chancetragedy wrote: I have a question for you jy2. Because it seems your list is pretty balanced but if you were to have something killed first turn that would throw you off your game what would it be? A flyrant? A tervigon? It's so hard to figure out target priority in your list and I very rarely get to play against nids. It seems people go after your gargoyles a lot and I can't imagine that's always the right choice...
Not if you kill 1 unit. If you kill 2 VIP targets (i.e. flyrants and/or tervigons), then that may throw me off, like in my Game #1. Still, tyranids are rugged enough such that they can still come back from such a pounding. Despite losing 1 flyrant and 1 tervigon on Turn 2 and then my other flyrant on Turn 3, I still felt that I had a good chance to win this game. That's what makes my list so hard to fight. There is a lot of redundancy and my TMC's (tyranid monstrous creatures) are so hard to take down.
The gargoyles are what I would call secondary targets. They are fast and dangerous and much easier to kill. That's why a lot of people go after them. They aren't as important as my flyrants and tervigons, however, if you don't deal with them, they will hit your lines on T2 and tie up a lot of units. So it's kind of a pick-your-poison type of situation. Focus on the tough-to-kill big guys and let the small but fast guys hit your lines or focus on the easier-to-kill small guys so that your units will be free to continue shooting.
Personally, I would go after the tervigons if the opportunity presents itself. If the tervies are too hard to kill (i.e. with Iron Arm, Endurance and/or cover), then I would go after the easiest-to-kill-2nd-most-important targets.
Mannahnin wrote: That's a straight-up blown call by the judge. While, IMO, the BAOFAQ is completely correct and consistent with the 40k rules, the Vector Strike errata (on page 1 of the main rulebook FAQ) specifically and explicitly allows Vector Strike to hit Flyers. Ah well, mistakes happen.
The Burning Brand does require the swap of a weapon; which is why you can't get both it and the Black Mace on a Daemon Prince; because he only comes with one weapon to swap. However the bike does come with twin-linked bolters, which are a weapon and many people believe are legit to swap out as one of the model's weapons for a purchased weapon. And that swap was explicitly ruled to be legal in the BAOFAQ:
I don't disagree. This was one of those FAQ rules that went against RAW. It also actually makes flyers stronger, as you can't vector-strike another flyer as long as it is flying. Thus, flying monstrous creatures can't even down flyers with vector strikes!
In any case, I'm sure a lot of players probably overlooked this FAQ ruling.
Lol. Yeah, that sounds about right.
Also, sometimes you have to take into consideration other factors....like LOS-blocking terrain where your flyrants can hide, night-fight and the range of the opponent (i.e. 24" for grey knights and necrons). If I can get away with going 2nd in an objectives game, I usually try to. But more often than not, I'd probably want to go first.
Just be careful not to make that assumption all the time. Letting a 24"gunline army like Necs and us GK can turn around to bite you hard because it allows us to get in range of your army. To have total board control range to shoot at you for the rest of the game, if we have to move to you, is a risky strategy in an objective game. Sometimes it's that extra movement up that makes the difference between a win and a loss because you forced us to move in range of your army ie now we can shoot at your army (the backfield campers that shouldn't be getting shot at) in addition to your frontal force if the strategic value of wiping that gant squad staking you off the emperors will objective in the back for say is worth the risk loss of the purifier squad etc.. Worrying about tide of grimmles and flyrants and not the biovores and gant obj holders in the back should be 24" armies main priority but given a break in the tide the game may really turn in our favor. Jus a little something to think about, hope you take it to heart
Agreed. That wasn't a blanket statement that you should always go 2nd against mid-range armies. Rather, there is more flexibility for a tyranid player against a mid-range shooting army. It depends on what type of shooting they bring (massed plasmas would hurt!), but it wouldn't be the end of the world if tyranids have to go 2nd against these types of armies. You know you can always deploy the flyrants outside of their threat range and still zoom 24" to threaten them on your turn. However, there are also advantages to going 1st against these types of armies and I did so against 1 of my GK opponents. So you really have to make a judgement call to see what you want to do. However, against certain armies like Space Wolves long fang-spam, Tau, gunline IG or shooty DE, you almost always want to go first.
Thanks, I appreciate the info! I sort of figured your army was distributed well like that from the batreps. It's always cool to learn about an army you don't get experience with.
wyomingfox wrote: Wondering why he didn't focus both turkeys on taking out the non-iron armed Flyrant. At 36 " and you having advanced up the board, it is pretty easy to VS and still flame something else.
Because of a weird FAQ by the BAO. This was up there with flyers being able to shoot straight down and with vehicles being able to deny objectives.
From the BAOFAQ's:
Flyers and Flying Monstrous Creatures
• Any attacks or special abilities that can cause damage (i.e. hits, wounds and/or vehicle damage) without rolling to hit (e.g. an Ork Weirdboy’s Zzap psychic power, Imotekh’s Lord of the Storm or Njal’s Lord of Tempests special rules) have no effect on Zooming Flyers and Swooping Flying Monstrous Creatures. This is true even if the attacking unit has the Skyfire special rule. [pg. 3, W40KRB FAQ]
Before the match, we double-checked with one of the judges and he confirmed this restriction. Both of my flyrants were swooping at the time.
But the rulebook specically states you can vector strike Flyers...lol. And
Automatically Appended Next Post: So if the FAQ wasnt intrtpreted that way, would you have moved your flyrants differently. If so how?
But the rulebook specically states you can vector strike Flyers...lol. And
Automatically Appended Next Post: So if the FAQ wasnt intrtpreted that way, would you have moved your flyrants differently. If so how?
Yeah, some of the BAOFAQ's are actual rule changes, such as the one about flyers being able to shoot a vertical 180 degrees and that scoring vehicles can also contest.
But say that the heldrakes can VS my flyrants. What would I do differently? Nothing.
Let's say both birdies VS the non-Iron Armed flyrant. First of all, I'd give him FNP if I think that he is going to be in harm's way (i.e. the heldrakes). So can they kill him? The 2 turkeys would average (2D3+2)/2 hits or 4 hits, of which 2.67 wounds (round up to 3W). I then make 1 FNP save so on average, they would do 2W to my flyrant. He'd still be alive and next turn, both flyrants would go after both helturkeys. Most likely, I would have taken out both of his flyers.
In the worst-case scenario, he kills my non-Iron Armed flyrant. Next turn my Iron Armed flyrant would take out 1 dragon. The turn after that, I would go after his noise marines on his Emperor's Will objective. The results would have been the same, only he'll probably survive 1 turn longer and he gets my Warlord.
The rules change would have only delayed the inevitable perhaps 1 or 2 turns longer. Honestly, his army wasn't designed to be able to take on my army. They still can, but they would probably require the same amount of luck that my Game #1 opponent had.
But the rulebook specically states you can vector strike Flyers...lol. And
Automatically Appended Next Post: So if the FAQ wasnt intrtpreted that way, would you have moved your flyrants differently. If so how?
Yeah, some of the BAOFAQ's are actual rule changes, such as the one about flyers being able to shoot a vertical 180 degrees and that scoring vehicles can also contest.
But say that the heldrakes can VS my flyrants. What would I do differently? Nothing.
Let's say both birdies VS the non-Iron Armed flyrant. First of all, I'd give him FNP if I think that he is going to be in harm's way (i.e. the heldrakes). So can they kill him? The 2 turkeys would average (2D3+2)/2 hits or 4 hits, of which 2.67 wounds (round up to 3W). I then make 1 FNP save so on average, they would do 2W to my flyrant. He'd still be alive and next turn, both flyrants would go after both helturkeys. Most likely, I would have taken out both of his flyers.
In the worst-case scenario, he kills my non-Iron Armed flyrant. Next turn my Iron Armed flyrant would take out 1 dragon. The turn after that, I would go after his noise marines on his Emperor's Will objective. The results would have been the same, only he'll probably survive 1 turn longer and he gets my Warlord.
The rules change would have only delayed the inevitable perhaps 1 or 2 turns longer. Honestly, his army wasn't designed to be able to take on my army. They still can, but they would probably require the same amount of luck that my Game #1 opponent had.
The two turkeys would average 6 hits, not 4. d3+1 each, which is an average of 3 hits apiece, or 6 total, which comes to 4 wounds. So you'd def want that FNP up!
Of all the flyers out there, are there any in particular your nids do fear then?
The two turkeys would average 6 hits, not 4. d3+1 each, which is an average of 3 hits apiece, or 6 total, which comes to 4 wounds. So you'd def want that FNP up!
Of all the flyers out there, are there any in particular your nids do fear then?
Hmmm....guess my math is a little off.
I fear flyers with a high output for damage. Heldrakes aren't as scary because they can only vector-strike, which can be mitigated somewhat by either positioning or assaulting the enemy. And then when they do VS the flyrant, you are in prime position next turn to get rear shots at it (assuming you survive). Other flyers like vendettas and necron scythes have a higher output of damage and they can do so from a distance as well. Thus, you won't be able to get to the rear of the vendetta to try to take it down. And night scythes with their AV11 isn't as easy to take down. Stormravens I'm not as concerned about due to their lower damage output, though they are very hard to put down for tyranids. As for Forgeworld, I guess they could hurt depending on what type of FW flyer.
GK Storm Ravens are particularly effective against Psyker heavy armies such as Nids.
Avenger Strike Fighter with its Heavy 7 Str6 AP3 shots and Lascannons at BS3 + Starfing Run could be effective in taking out Tervigons or Flyrants. Although with side and rear AV10 with only 2 HP, it won't survive shooting from a second dakka Flyrant.
Played against two flyrants with the tl dakka ness at a tourny last weekend, managed to kill one with interceptor from two lots of hyperios's (he managed to jink one then grounded himself and lost his last wound), he did have iron arm on both tyrants and a tervigon but he kept the tyrants in reserve not relising he has to be on the board to cast the power, I wasnt going to correct him as they would have been a bitch to kill with iron arm!.
It is Day #2 and the games are only getting harder. After going 3-1 on Day #1, now I will be playing against the other winners. I predict no easy games coming up today. I am going to have to fight for all my games. Also, I've got my work cut out for me for the Best Tyranid player. Currently, Janthkin is one of the few undefeated tyranid players left at 4-0. There may be another 1 or 2 bug players ahead of me as well, with either a 4-0 or a 3-0-1 record (W-L-D). I can't make any mistakes. I think I need to win all my remaining 3 games in order to have any chance at the honor.
But first up, I need to get past Dr. Insanotron himself, Ben Cromwell's grey knights. It's not going to be an easy battle.
Game #5 vs Grey Knights
Ben Cromwell (aka Dr. Insanotron) from Sinister Wargaming is a seasoned and very good tournament player. He has been playing competitively for a while now and in his last tournament, the TSHFT 2013, he won Best Overall in his class (Class A). He is 3-1 coming into this game, having just lost his last game narrowly against Janthkin's tyranids by only 1-pt. But mainly, I know he is good because during our game, Reece came over and told me that he was a very good player. (Strangely enough, Reece didn't tell Ben that I was a very good player. )
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #5 - Purge the Alien (4pts) & The Scouring (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #5, The Scouring is worth 3-points and Purge the Alien worth 4-points.
Ben has a very good army. However, his knights are missing 1 very important element - psybolt ammo. I guess that he is in the camp where psybolt ammo is just a luxury. I am in the camp where psybolt ammo on a 10-man striker unit is mandatory. Other than that, I like his list. While my flyrants aren't afraid of his storm ravens, they will give me some problems. Mindstrike missiles will hurt my tervigons and I have no defense against them. My opponent will have 2 large problems, however....both of my flyrants has got Iron Arm! The last time that happened in a match against striker-spam grey knights, I destroyed them. So I feel good going into this match. I think my opponent will be the slight underdog in this matchup.
Coteaz casts his powers. Grey knights advance slightly. Rhinos and dreads move back and out of range of my hive guards.
Shooting kills only 4 gargoyles. That's it.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
Flyrants cast Iron Arm and Zoans can Endurance on them. They then swoop directly towards my opponent's army without a care in the world.
The rest of my bugs advance.
I fire both biovores at Coteaz's unit. I only manage to kill 1 striker. However, the unit gets pinned!
I cannot kill his rhino! Both flyrants are forced to shoot at it and I only manage to take off 2 Hull Points and stun it. Doh!
Now my opponent has a very good chance to get First Blood, especially if his ravens come in next turn.
The rest of my bugs run forwards.
Grey Knights 2
Spoiler:
Both ravens come in!
While trying to Fortitude off the Stunned result, my opponent rolls snake-eyes on its psychic test and perils, thus killing his rhino (already lost 2 HP's from my shooting) and giving me First Blood. (I apologize for finding humor in another person's misfortunes, but in this case, I couldn't help it. )
GK: 0, Tyranids: 1
GK movement.
Both of the ravens focus-fire on my tervigon (with Iron Arm), firing 2 mindstrike missiles each, and bring it down.
GK: 1, Tyranids: 1
He also manages to put 1W on my non-Warlord flyrant.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
The Doom comes in and scatters slightly out.
My Warlord (on the left) swoops. The other flyrant glides so that he can assault.
I forget about Coteaz's I've Been Expecting You. He fires on the Doom and takes it down to 1W remaining.
The rest of my army advance. Hive guards fire at his raven (with the strikers in it) and glance it for 1 HP.
A combination of the Doom's Spirit Leech, my Warlord shooting and the biovores kill off 7 from Coteaz's unit.
My other flyrant and biovores take out 5 strikers from his other unit.
My flyrant then assaults. I only kill 2, they break and I catch them in combat. Due to ATSKNF, they just remain in combat instead of getting wiped out.
Grey Knights 3
Spoiler:
GK movement. Everyone pulls back. Strikers disembark from their rhino and Coteaz joins them.
Ravens continue to fly.
A dread insta-pops the mycetic spore.
GK: 2, Tyranids: 1
Ravens fire the rest of their mindstrike missiles and assault cannon at my tervigon but only manage to put 3W on him. He uses Power of the Machine Spirit (PotMS) to fire at and kill 1 biovore.
The other raven uses PotMS to shoot down 3 gants.
However, what really hurt is that his other psyfleman guns down both zoanthropes with its insta-gibbing shots.
GK: 3, Tyranids: 1
Damn....there goes 1 VP, a source of my synapse and both of my Endurances!
My opponent manages to take off 2W from my Warlord (who is at T7 only).
Finally, my flyrant finishes off his strikers in assault.
GK: 3, Tyranids: 2
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
My Warlord (at T8) goes back to help out (he is gliding). My other flyrant (at T7) goes after Coteaz's unit.
My Warlord and the hive guards shoot at the ravens. I may have taken off 1HP again.
Spirit Leech by the Doom, flyrant shooting and I believe the biovores take out 5 strikers from Coteaz's unit and 1 striker from the other unit (only 1 psycannon remaining). Coteaz himself takes 1 or 2 wounds as well (from the Doom).
My flyrant then assaults and kills Coteaz in a challenge, thus getting me Slay the Warlord.
GK: 3, Tyranids: 3
Grey Knights 4
Spoiler:
Ravens move. I believe one of them (of maybe both) goes into Hover mode. Out disembarks the strikers.
The psyfleman insta-gibs the Doom. Man, what is up with those bad boys?
GK: 4, Tyranids: 3
His lone purifier gets into a rhino for protection. They then shoot down 1 gant.
Ravens take out another 1 biovore, getting him another VP.
GK: 5, Tyranids: 3
Strikers shoot down 1 hive guard and put 1W on another. The ravens shoot down my tervigon. Fortunately for me, there are no gants nearby. Unfortunately for me, I've just lost synapse at home!
GK: 6, Tyranids: 3
His strikers then multi-assault my hive guards and gants.
I lose combat and the gants break. However, the hive guards are within synapse of my Warlord and so they stay.
This game has just gotten interesting again.
Tyranids 4
Spoiler:
My Warlord glides. His presence makes my fleeing gants fearless once again.
Not much shooting as he has no unengaged infantry on the table. We go straight into assault after my movement phase.
My Warlord enters into the melee.
I only kill 2 and they take off another 1W from my flyrant. Strikers would pass morale.
My other flyrant finishes off his strikers.
GK: 6, Tyranids: 4
Grey Knights 5
Spoiler:
GK movement.
Lone striker goes after my unit of 4 gants.
It takes the striker, rhino and 1 psyfleman to wipe out those gants.
GK: 7, Tyranids: 4
Ravens also finish off my other unit of gants on the 3-pt Scouring objective.
GK: 8, Tyranids: 4
In assault, I manage to kill another 2 strikers.
Tyranids 5
Spoiler:
So currently, despite the ass-kicking that I've been doing, I am way down on the Primary, Victory Points. However, I am confident that I can get the Secondary, the Scouring. So what do I need to do? I need to kick ass and take names!
The flyrant goes after his striker and rhino. 2 for the price of one...assuming I can kill that bloody box.
Gargoyles string out to get the objective, using my flyrant for cover.
My flyrant shoots at his rhino and....
....I blow it up.
GK: 8, Tyranids: 5
My biovores, due to only having 1 target that they can kill, fire at and kill the lone striker, thus denying my flyrant the satisfaction of the kill.
GK: 8, Tyranids: 6
Finally, in combat, my flyrant just cannot finish off those strikers. I only manage to kill 1.
So I've got Secondary. My opponent's got Primary. He's also got Linebreaker. I, on the other hand, have Linebreaker, Warlord and First Blood.
If the game were to end now, I would win it 6-5. We roll to see if the game continues and fortunately for Ben, it does.
Grey Knights 6
Spoiler:
His raven goes and drop the henchmen off onto an objective. They run but unfortunately are not able to make it into cover.
BTW, his last unit of henchmen came in last turn but are far, far away from any objectives and my flyrant.
His other raven flies and goes after my gargoyles.
Shooting only takes out 5 gargoyles. They live!
In combat, strikers are reduced to just 1 guy left. I should be able to get this VP next turn.
Tyranids 6
Spoiler:
Gargoyles go for the objective.
My flyrant swoops behind his dread to go for rear-armor shots.
My biovores fire at his henchmen and I land 2 direct hits, wiping out the unit!!!
GK: 8, Tyranids: 7
Now if I can wipe out his dreadnought, I think I will guarantee myself the victory. My flyrant shoots with his S6 twin-linked devourers. 10 hits! I then roll more armour penetration and only 2 out of those 10 hits penetrates! I then fail to kill him. NOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Finally in combat, my flyrant wipes out his strikers.
GK: 8, Tyranids: 8
We roll to see if the game continues and it does not.
However, he tells me that he killed another termagant unit earlier in the game with his shooting.
GK: 9, Tyranids: 8
So my opponent takes Purge the Alien for 4-pts. I have gants on 1 objective and my gargoyles on another. I take the Scouring for 3-pts. He gets Linebreaker (his stormraven). I've got Linebreaker (my flyrant), Warlord and First Blood (rhino).
Thus, my tyranids take it 6-5.
However....
He tells me that I don't have Linebreaker. He points out to me that my unit needs to be completely inside his deployment zone. It turns out that my flyrant was just 1/2 an inch out. NOOOOOOO (Part Deus)!!!!!!!
I am kicking myself after this game, as it is a game I should have won. If only I had moved my flyrant back just a little bit, I would have gotten Linebreaker. However, I was pretty sure that I had it (Linebreaker) by a considerable margin. Also, if only I had killed his dread, I would have had the game as well. 10 S6 shots into AV10 should have produced me at least 5 glances/pens on average. I only got 2. This was a bitter Draw to swallow. Probably harder to swallow than my Turn 1 loss. At least there, it was the dice and there wasn't much I could have done about it. I was fighting from behind and so my expectations of winning that game wasn't very high. In this game, other than the dread, dice wasn't really too much of a factor. The game was mine for the taking and I fumbled it. Sigh.
All in all, I'd like to thank my opponent, Ben, for such a great game. He was battling from behind all game and never gave up even when things were going against him. He put up an incredible fight to pull off the draw and went after all the right targets. Very well done, Ben.
He really did well to stay in this and pull the draw, I think there was a fair exchange of luck on both sides. He must have been so upset for giving you FBlol.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Very intense game, best so far btw!
Red Corsair wrote: He really did well to stay in this and pull the draw, I think there was a fair exchange of luck on both sides. He must have been so upset for giving you FBlol.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Very intense game, best so far btw!
Thanks. This was my closest game yet and I absolutely loved it (until the very stupid mistake on my part at the end).
Yeah, I'm sure he was probably kicking himself for that. Though in all fairness, 24 TL-S6 shots should have killed that rhino. 18 hits, 6 glances/pens would have been the average.
Yeah - the turkey can vector strike flyers as that was what it is designed to do. That is bunk and won't happen at Wargames as that is against the rules as written for it. Why change it when there is nothing "ambiguous" as it specifically states it can do it. Two turkeys could have meant one flyrant down - which would have been helpful.
Still you would have won the game as you have so much more deadly bits but still - meh.[
But congrats on everything else - the army is top notch - and like I said I don't think the game outcome would have been different as he would have to fly both over one - and then roll one and then another - if he got lucky with one the other's vector hits would have been lost etc. Most likely he would have gone after the wounded one and needed to do 3 wounds etc.
that first game loss was rough too - stupid 6's for necrons getting even better then just rolling the 6.
SabrX wrote: GK Storm Ravens are particularly effective against Psyker heavy armies such as Nids.
Avenger Strike Fighter with its Heavy 7 Str6 AP3 shots and Lascannons at BS3 + Starfing Run could be effective in taking out Tervigons or Flyrants. Although with side and rear AV10 with only 2 HP, it won't survive shooting from a second dakka Flyrant.
Also, congrats on the CSM + Daemons game.
Yeah, those ravens did a number on my bugs in my Game #5.
Haven't played against the Avenger, but their alpha-strike capability would definitely hurt. Each one could probably kill a flyrant so against them, I'd probably try to get into combat as quickly as possible.
MarkyMark wrote: Played against two flyrants with the tl dakka ness at a tourny last weekend, managed to kill one with interceptor from two lots of hyperios's (he managed to jink one then grounded himself and lost his last wound), he did have iron arm on both tyrants and a tervigon but he kept the tyrants in reserve not relising he has to be on the board to cast the power, I wasnt going to correct him as they would have been a bitch to kill with iron arm!.
Shame on the tyranid player for not knowing that. It really cost him. So far, I have never left my flyrants in reserves. They have stayed on the board in every single game so far.
I think that might have been a mistake on the BAO open judges. The units should still be able to vector strike flyers specifically flyers because GW gives permission to do it in the GWFAQ. The rules that talk about not hitting flyers would be things such as Imoteks storm and etc because those don't otherwise. The big thing is GWFAQ says it can hit flyers it can hit flyers.
The FAQ is only suppose to cover places that need to get answered because GW hasn't answered them.
In any other game I would have mentioned it considering I was running 2 squads of 3 hyperios as well it was going to hurt him deepstriking. I ended up coming fourth due to me handing the wrong results in for game 1, I got three wins (two by tabling GK armies) and 2 draws against the same person, it was knockout style, the draws were against Azreal with 50 guardsmen first game I forgot to combat squad which cost me the win I then went on to lose to necrons for 3rd 4th place. I have only been playing 6 months and theres quite a few seasoned tourny players there so happy with that.
GoatboyBBMA wrote: Yeah - the turkey can vector strike flyers as that was what it is designed to do. That is bunk and won't happen at Wargames as that is against the rules as written for it. Why change it when there is nothing "ambiguous" as it specifically states it can do it. Two turkeys could have meant one flyrant down - which would have been helpful.
Still you would have won the game as you have so much more deadly bits but still - meh.
But congrats on everything else - the army is top notch - and like I said I don't think the game outcome would have been different as he would have to fly both over one - and then roll one and then another - if he got lucky with one the other's vector hits would have been lost etc. Most likely he would have gone after the wounded one and needed to do 3 wounds etc.
that first game loss was rough too - stupid 6's for necrons getting even better then just rolling the 6.
Perhaps they weren't thinking about vector strikes when they worded the FAQ. Perhaps they were thinking about all the other "attacks". However, vector strike does happen to fall under the category of "attacks that causes hits/wounds/armour penetration without having to roll to hit". Maybe we were the minority who played it as such and most other people there played it as you can do it. I'd be slightly curious, though I don't think it would have changed the outcome.
Too bad you didn't come to the BAO this time around. I would have loved to play against one of you Texans.
Darkwynn wrote: I think that might have been a mistake on the BAO open judges. The units should still be able to vector strike flyers specifically flyers because GW gives permission to do it in the GWFAQ. The rules that talk about not hitting flyers would be things such as Imoteks storm and etc because those don't otherwise. The big thing is GWFAQ says it can hit flyers it can hit flyers.
The FAQ is only suppose to cover places that need to get answered because GW hasn't answered them.
Perhaps. We were probably the minority who played it this way. I have a feeling most of the other players weren't even aware of the FAQ.
MarkyMark wrote: In any other game I would have mentioned it considering I was running 2 squads of 3 hyperios as well it was going to hurt him deepstriking. I ended up coming fourth due to me handing the wrong results in for game 1, I got three wins (two by tabling GK armies) and 2 draws against the same person, it was knockout style, the draws were against Azreal with 50 guardsmen first game I forgot to combat squad which cost me the win I then went on to lose to necrons for 3rd 4th place. I have only been playing 6 months and theres quite a few seasoned tourny players there so happy with that.
Congrats! 4th is very respectable for such a new player to do against grizzled old veterans in a competitive environment.
When we wrote that we decided not to put anything in the FAQ about not effecting vector strikes because of GW's ruling on Vector strikes in the main FAQ. Sorry if that caused confusion.
No worries. I only played against helturkeys once. And actually, if my opponent insisted, I would have let him do it as I didn't agree with the FAQ either.
Anything GW says trumps us. Sorry if that was confusing, I will talk to the guys in our next council meeting to get a clarification on that to avoid confusion.
Anything GW says trumps us. Sorry if that was confusing, I will talk to the guys in our next council meeting to get a clarification on that to avoid confusion.
I expected as much, Reece, but you'll want to put that in a preamble to the document, like the INAT had.
And note that places where the FAQ is meant to override the GW rulebook/FAQs (like the flyer LOS thing) will be called out somehow, like being marked in bold and/or labeled "THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THE RULEBOOK for ease of play."
Ah, thanks for the clarifications, Reece. Now it makes more sense. I thought the FAQ was sort of weird.
So we played it wrong.
I want to apologize to my Game #4 opponent, Steve. Had I not brought up the FAQ, we would have played it the right way. Despite that, Steve was a class act and took his beating with a friendly smile despite having 1 arm tied behind his back.
Yeah, we will add some clarification text to the document. Sorry for the confusion, definitely not intended. The parts where we actually changed things are prefaced with: for the sake of ease in this tournament......
Anything GW says trumps us. Sorry if that was confusing, I will talk to the guys in our next council meeting to get a clarification on that to avoid confusion.
Its just easier if we all blame the Reece guy that wore short shorts to a team tournament.
jy2 wrote:
Gaming up later tonight....Game #6 vs Blackmoor's Draigowing!
Should be an interesting match-up. Not sure the silver bullies will handle a horde too well.
As for your game 4 nail biter it reminded me a lot of one of my games. It hasnt been posted yet but hopefully I can get them done by mid-week.
Brutal draw! I bet that just as you are kicking yourself for that final Tyrant move not getting Linebreaker, though, your opponent is kicking himself for casting Fortitude with that Rhino and giving you First Blood.
I'm looking forward to seeing the play-by-play on Game Six!
Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
Eldercaveman wrote: Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
QFT! There is no requirement to be wholly within the deployment zone. Unless you all had a faq establishing that requirement.
Eldercaveman wrote: Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
QFT! There is no requirement to be wholly within the deployment zone. Unless you all had a faq establishing that requirement.
It's in the rulebook FAQ. Has to be whole model (or rather, base of the model)
Eldercaveman wrote: Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
QFT! There is no requirement to be wholly within the deployment zone. Unless you all had a faq establishing that requirement.
I assume thats the case, or else someone got mugged
Eldercaveman wrote: Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
QFT! There is no requirement to be wholly within the deployment zone. Unless you all had a faq establishing that requirement.
I assume thats the case, or else someone got mugged
From the rulebook FAQ:
Q: To score a Victory Point for achieving the Linebreaker Secondary
Objective, you must have at least one model from one or more scoring
or denial units within the enemy’s deployment zone. Does such a
model have to be completely within the enemy’s deployment zone, or
do they still count if they are only partially within? (p122)
A: The base of the model in question must be wholly within
the enemy’s deployment zone.
Oops. We've been playing this wrong for some time now. Glad I know this now.
Eldercaveman wrote: Also I'm not sure you would have to be wholey within the deployment zone, the rule just says you need one model from a scoring or denial unit in the enemies deployment zone.
QFT! There is no requirement to be wholly within the deployment zone. Unless you all had a faq establishing that requirement.
I assume thats the case, or else someone got mugged
From the rulebook FAQ:
Q: To score a Victory Point for achieving the Linebreaker Secondary
Objective, you must have at least one model from one or more scoring
or denial units within the enemy’s deployment zone. Does such a
model have to be completely within the enemy’s deployment zone, or
do they still count if they are only partially within? (p122)
A: The base of the model in question must be wholly within
the enemy’s deployment zone.
Oops. We've been playing this wrong for some time now. Glad I know this now.
At this point, I am 3-1-1. I thought I was pretty much out of the running for Best Tyranids. I believe there may be still 1 tyranid player who is either 5-0 or 4-0-1. Janthkin just lost his last game (I believe he lost to eventual runner-up Alan Bajramovic) but is still at 4-1 and ahead of me. There may be another bug player who is ahead of me so currently, I am probably 3rd or 4th place as the Best Tyranid player. Ok, I need to work extra hard and win my last 2 games in order to have a prayer of a chance to still nab Best Tyranid.
And then who should I find at my table? None other than Blackmoor and his dreaded Draigowing Grey Knights!
Game #6 vs Draigowing Grey Knights
Allan Hernandez, aka Blackmoor, is a very good and very successful tournament Grey Knight player. He's attended many of the largest tournaments here in the US, including Adepticon, Nova, Wargamescon and the Bay Area Open. Last year in 2012, he played in Comikaze GT and placed 2nd. He also played in the Bay Area Open, which had some of the best players in the West Coast attend, and he came in 3rd out of 92 players, behind Christian's Mechanized Imperial Guards (1st) and James' Coteaz Grey Knights (2nd).
Blackmoor also played in the Bay Area Open 2011, placing 3rd there as well. But perhaps the biggest accomplishment in his tournament career would be in the 2011 Nova Open. There he played against a very, very competitive crowd and would go on unbeaten until he played the eventual winner of Nova, Tony Kopach, on the final table for the Nova Championship. Blackmoor ended up 5th overall out of a field of 204 players at the Nova Open. One of his more notable wins in the tournament included a win over Stelek's MSU space wolves (who ended up 3rd overall).
Recently just last month, I went down to SoCal for a business trip. While there, I got a game in against Allan's grey knights:
In that game, he brought a much different GK army with a Grandmaster instead of Draigo and strikers + psyfleman dreads instead of interceptors. This time around, he's brought an almost completely different army. Coteaz and the Paladinstar remained the same, but he overhauled the rest of his army. His "newer" army isn't quite as shooty as his previous army. However, it is much, much faster with the inclusion of 2 interceptor squads. Part of the reason for the changes was due to his "test" game against my bugs. You're welcome, Allan. Glad to be of service.
So far in the tournament, Allan has the exact same record as me. He got a draw in his very first game even though he was about to table his 1st round opponent. All she had left on the board were just 2 small squads of chaos cultists while he had practically his entire army. All Allan had to do was move towards an objective (or something like that) for the win. However, "dice down" was called just before his turn and Allan's opponent would not let him continue. Thus the game ended in a draw despite the heavy beating his opponent was taking.
Allan would go on to win his next 3 games. However, in his last game (game #5), he would play against the eventual winner of the BAO, Elizabeth Foster. It was an extremely close game and she managed to eke out a 1-pt win against Allan. So now here we both are at 3-1-1. Actually, we are both going after the same thing - me for Best Tyranid and him for Best Grey Knight - but we are each standing in the other's way. So either one of us is going to be a step closer to his goal or one of us can start heading out early.
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #6 - Big Guns Never Tire (4pts) & The Relic (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #6, The Relic is worth 3-points and Big Guns Never Tire worth 4-points.
Similar army, different tactics. The last time I played against Blackmoor, I went directly at his paladinstar. This time, however, I am going to try to avoid them. This time, his army is better suited to this Mission Scenario than in our last game. His interceptors can now try to contest my objectives when needed (whereas in our last game, he ran the slow strikers), and the Relic has always been a strength of Draigowing builds. My strategy is two-fold:
1) Try to stall his paladins. Tarpitting won't work that well as I found out in our last matchup so this time, I am going to employ screening. Screen out his paladinstar with my gribblies to slow him down. Fortunately for me, we aren't playing Victory Points.
2) Kill everything else but his deathstar. His deathstar is just too hard to kill so I'm just going to kill off all his supporting (and scoring) units. Let's see how many places can his deathstar be all at the same time.
I have 2 distinct advantages. First off I picked the side where the center impassable terrain isn't in my way in regards to the Relic. Thus, in order for my opponent to get to the Relic, he needs to move around the terrain whereas I just need to move in a straight line. This also gives me the advantage that whoever picks up the Relic will be shielded by the impassable, LOS-blocking terrain from his shooting. Secondly, for the very first time in this tournament, I am going first. Finally.
For Grand Strategy, Blackmoor gets 1 unit of scoring Interceptors.
Tyranid deployment. I leave my 2 Big Gun objectives close to my board edge. Thus, I leave my 2 units of gants in reserves so that they can come on in and claim those objectives.
Blackmoor's deployment. He combat squads his 2 units of interceptors but leaves his big paladinstar intact. He leaves his henchmen in reserves and will be deepstriking his soladin.
Overview of our deployment.
Despite trying to seize the initiative twice, my opponent fails and we begin.
Flyrants swoop after my army casts its psychic powers.
The rest of my army moves and then runs. Tervigon should be within easy reach of the Relic next turn.
My opponent makes a mistake by clumping his interceptors all so close to each other. Flyrants and biovores focus on the interceptors. My shooting is subpar as I only manage to kill off 1 combat squad and 1 member from another combat squad. At least I get First Blood, though I was actually expecting to kill more guys than that.
Grey Knights 1
Spoiler:
Coteaz casts Prescience on the paladins and Forewarning on the front interceptor unit (the 4++ Invuln power).
Grey knights advance and interceptors now spread out.
Blackmoor has an excellent turn of shooting, downing my Iron Armed flyrant (I believe he was at T8) who happened to be in cover as well!
Crap! I've just lost a very important unit - my flyrant with Iron Arm! I was not expecting that. Oh well, time to adjust my tactics.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
Both tervigons spawn gants to screen out. And both tervigons roll doubles! Just to be on the safe side, I move my gargoyles to act as a third screen as well. None of my reserves come in.
This would be a mistake on my part.
The Iron Armed tervigon goes and picks up the Relic.
I decide to continue swooping with my Warlord (who actually failed to cast FNP!).
My shooting is much, much better this turn. With only 1 flyrant and my biovores, I completely wipe out 1 combat squad and kill off 4 from another interceptor combat squad.
Front gant unit fire at and kill 1 interceptor.
A very good turn of shooting for me. However, I did not know it yet, but next turn, Blackmoor is going to make me pay.
Grey Knights 2
Spoiler:
He moves his lone interceptor away.
His soladin comes in and deepstrikes near my main force.
He surprises me be going after my gargoyles. His paladinstar fires psycannons, stormbolters, Holocaust and Draigo's heavy flamer. Holocaust and the flamer also hit a lot of my screening gribblies. His 3-man interceptor unit and soladin with Holocaust also fire at my gribblies as well.
When the dust settles, he has wiped out my gargoyles and 1 unit of gants. The front unit of gants is reduced to just 4 models left! Wow! In just 1 turn of shooting, he's reduced all my gribblies to just 4 models left and both of my tervigons cannot spawn anymore! Holy crap...we may just have a game again. Very well done, Blackmoor!
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
1 unit of gants come in. They head towards one of my Big Gun objectives.
Here is another mistake that Blackmoor makes. He forgets to take into account the Doom.
Agghhhh!!! You would think that after my last game, I would remember about Coteaz's I've Been Expecting You. Fortunately for me, the Doom is just out of range so the paladins pop the mycetic spore instead.
As for my strategy, nothing has changed. My unit of 4 gants defy the paladins to the bitter end.
The rest of my army retreats.
As do the tervigons. Try taking out an Iron Armed tervigon with Endurance, cover and the Relic!
Flyrant swoops forwards and goes after the lone interceptor.
The Doom is a monster and Spirit Leeches both the soladin and the 3 interceptors (despite Forewarning on them). You can call him Mr McNasty!
My Warlord shoots down his lone interceptor with ease.
Mission accomplished. I have wiped out all of his support units (with the exception of the henchmen unit still in reserves).
Grey Knights 3
Spoiler:
I believe this turn, Coteaz fails to cast Prescience (he actually perils) but manages to cast Forewarning on the paladins.
His henchmen finally comes in.
Draigo splits off from the unit, who retreats back towards their Big Gun objectives.
His paladinstar try to shoot down my Warlord (with FNP). They only do 1W to him.
Draigo then assaults and kills the gants, consolidating 5-6" forwards.
Tyranids 4
Spoiler:
The rest of my army comes in and I swarm both of my objectives. I actually fail to cast Iron Arm so pass off the Relic to the non-Iron Armed tervigon (with FNP). This way, if he kills off the tervigon with the Relic, then next turn I can pick it up with my Iron Arm tervigon again.
Hive guards go to screen out Draigo and the tervigons continue to retreat.
My Warlord swoops 12" forwards and shoots down his 3-henchmen unit.
Grey Knights 4
Spoiler:
Paladins continue to retreat towards their objective. Draigo goes around the hive guards.
Paladins shoot at my Relic holder (the non-Iron Armed tervigon) and causes 3W to him.
Tyranids 5
Spoiler:
My flyrant continues to fly away from his paladinstar. So now I've got a swooping flyrant with FNP and behind the 4+ cover ruins. I cannot afford to lose him because if I do, I will give up both Warlord as well as Linebreaker.
The Doom continues to follow his paladins and to be an annoyance for him to ignore.
Hive guards continue to screen out Draigo from my tervigons and I move my zoanthropes forwards in an attempt to assault and tie up Draigo (remember, one of them has Iron Arm).
I swap the Relic between the tervigons again. This time, my tervigon successfully cast Iron Arm. I also cast Endurance on the Iron Armed tervigon as well as give him cover with my wounded tervigon.
He is not going to get the Relic.
Biovores maybe put 1 or 2W on the paladins.
Grey Knights 5
Spoiler:
Draigo decides to go after my zoanthropes.
Paladins make it to their objective.
Draigo assaults. I believe I took 1W earlier from Perils while casting Iron Arm.
I would fail both saves and lose my zoanthropes. Draigo then consolidates 6" but is just millimeters shy of contesting one of my Big Gun objectives.
We then roll to see if the game continues and it doesn't.
The only reason I'm up right now is because I was watchin the movie "Nikita" with the fam, awesome movie btw I'd advise anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out, but back on topic; I'd say this game is going to still be uphill for blackmoore. I am almost sure he gets first blood however seeing those interceptors can easily wipe out a squad of biovores or gaunts but, after that, I don't see them being much a factor especially if Jy2 manages to catch them with his flyrants.... JY2 will be hoping for enfeeble on his Flyrants/ Iron arm on his Tervigons (I believe that is the one which gives FNP) main reason I say that is that Iron arm wont be affective against all those psycannon re-rollable rending shots and they deffinitely have the potential to pick off a flyrant in a turn if it gets grounded and those flyrants are Jy2's greatest strength in this matchup.
Jy2's plan my guess is to: ignores the paladin star in the middle and finishes off the inerceptors while the gaunts and Tervigons tarpit the paladin star and then then the flyrants join in after they've dealth with all the Interceptors and the gargoyles handle the henchmen. After that, there's not much for blackmoore can do to counter all those ap2 attacks/ attacks in general. While gaunt shooting is not great it is most certainly respectable given there alot of them, add in some hive guard with str 8 insta killing shots if rolling a 1 and the doom just outside the combat, leech lifing the tied up paladins... aww as much as it pains me to say this the match up is just not in the GK favor even with the game being relic.
Black Moore's plan would be to: play to take out the flyrants but Jy2 probaby won't allow him the chance He'll have em all the way, i mean all du way in the back . If he can ground the flyers and shoot them down with his paladins he'll stand a fair chance of winning then given he doesn't get bogged down in combat with the Doom life leeching the "watch yo mouth", out of his paladins. His interceptors will probably be the deciding factor for him because he needs their shots to ground his tyrants so he can shoot them with the paladins.
Final Verdict: Jy2 takes this one. (No hard feelings JY2, just I'm a GK player)
@ Blackmoore: I'd advise a RP, 2x NDK, 2x SR, or some combination of the sort at the 1750 pt level so that way you can be able to support your pali star against either Nids Tervigons, Flyrants, or psychics. While it may seem that the list is being tailored to them it really isn't because the role is used in games against many other armies as well ( Ex's being: 2x NDK with HI will relieve some pressure off your paladins and give you some extra ap2 punch and flamers for hordes/ low armor save opponents. 2 SR fill out the role of anti-flyer, anti- psychics, anti- tank, and mobility. Finally RP fills out the role of Anti psychics, anti- MC, anti-wraith suprisingly because their I is low, Anti Horde-(Murderous Hurricane for difficult and dangerous terrain test) Adding one of these into your army somehow I believe would really help to complement your list as Flyers, psychics, are truly a great threat for you and will lead to some really really tough match ups- if left un-adressed. Hope you take the advice to Heart
Gaming up later tonight....Game #6 vs Blackmoor's Draigowing!
I wonder how that will turn out?
Hi Allan,
Care to share your pre-game thoughts on how to tackle my bugs? I think the readers would be interested in the thought process of an experienced tournament player.
Thanks.
@Dezstiny
Wow...nice, long and detailed. Lots of information...that's good. And thanks!
First off, I actually watch "Nikita", the TV series. It's actually better than I thought and has managed to capture my attention so far.
You are right about my ignoring his paladinstar. The way to play against deathstar armies is this - ignore the deathstar and go after the supporting units. Well, in my first game against Blackmoor, I did the reverse. I went after his paladinstar mainly because Draigo wasn't there. I could kill his characters with Smash attacks and they weren't S10 against my MC's. However, now that he's brought back Draigo, I will revert back to my conservative play and ignore that 1000-pt unit. That unit is just too hard to kill in a direct confrontation....and if I do confront it directly, his interceptors have the mobility to zip around and hurt me (unlike in the 1st game where they were stuck in their deployment zones).
I'm afraid his paladinstar is going to be much harder to tarpit this time, especially with Draigo being S10 against my MC's. Even Iron Arm isn't going to hold out against them for very long. Speaking of Iron Arm, by the ways, that is still a very useful power which I would want. Rending psycannons will hurt. However, S5 stormbolters will hurt much more. Iron Arm protects me better against those as well as against his Force Weapons. Thus, IMO, Iron Arm is still the more important power when facing the grey knights. I don't get as lucky this game as I did in my last encounter against Ben's grey knights. I only get 1 Iron Arm on my flyrant (non-Warlord) and 1 on my tervigon, but I'll take it. That's still pretty good
Should be an interesting match-up. Not sure the silver bullies will handle a horde too well.
As for your game 4 nail biter it reminded me a lot of one of my games. It hasnt been posted yet but hopefully I can get them done by mid-week.
Oh, they can definitely handle hordes. Draigo has got his template weapon, the paladins holocaust and the unit 16 psycannon shots and S5-stormbolters. Then in assault, you're looking at base 3 Attacks each due to the banner.
I may not be able to tarpit them. However, I can try to slow them down with screening units. That's my strategy. Try to get the Relic and then screen out his paladins with gribblies or whatever I can use.
Hey....I like me some daisy dukes....but only on a chic.
Good thing my wife doesn't read my batreps.
Kingsley wrote: Brutal draw! I bet that just as you are kicking yourself for that final Tyrant move not getting Linebreaker, though, your opponent is kicking himself for casting Fortitude with that Rhino and giving you First Blood.
I'm looking forward to seeing the play-by-play on Game Six!
He did get off easy from my flyrants, however. I shot both flyrants into that rhino. That's 24 TL-S6 shots, of which 18 should hit and I should have gotten 6 glancs/pens to kill it. So maybe it was the dice gods compensating?
BTW, congrats on getting Best Space Marines player. Gooooo Game Kastle!
A photo of Kingsley's pre-BAO army from one of our earlier games (from last December before his army was done). Kingsley and SabrX were the only 2 to use broadsides in a bastion, and actually, SabrX got the idea from Kingsley. Both did very well, going 5-2 overall. Kingsley won Best Space Marines and SabrX almost won Best Tau by the tiniest of margins. And as for I....well, read on....
ImotekhTheStormlord wrote: This game is not looking good for the GK. A deathstar that large Is viable for being completely ignored
Hi William,
It's good to finally play against you for the first time. You did very well in our game, and now you have bragging rights that you took down a GT winner in a tournament. Congrats and I'll see you soon.
Care to share your pre-game thoughts on how to tackle my bugs? I think the readers would be interested in the thought process of an experienced tournament player.
Thanks.
Here are my thoughts going into our game:
I can’t believe that Lyzz hit on 5 out of 6 deepstrikes (is she scattered she would mishap)
If only her one squad of screamers that misshaped rolled a 1-3 I would have killed them and won.
I can’t believe how many saves her last horror made to deny me first blood. If I get first blood I would have won.
I can’t believe she made so many saves on her screamers.
I can’t believe all of her flamer shots on Coteaz wounded.
I can’t believe that I lost!
Other than that I had no thoughts before our game.
And Draigo was scoring for my warlord trait.
@ Blackmoore: I'd advise a RP, 2x NDK, 2x SR, or some combination of the sort at the 1750 pt level so that way you can be able to support your pali star against either Nids Tervigons, Flyrants, or psychics. While it may seem that the list is being tailored to them it really isn't because the role is used in games against many other armies as well ( Ex's being: 2x NDK with HI will relieve some pressure off your paladins and give you some extra ap2 punch and flamers for hordes/ low armor save opponents. 2 SR fill out the role of anti-flyer, anti- psychics, anti- tank, and mobility. Finally RP fills out the role of Anti psychics, anti- MC, anti-wraith suprisingly because their I is low, Anti Horde-(Murderous Hurricane for difficult and dangerous terrain test) Adding one of these into your army somehow I believe would really help to complement your list as Flyers, psychics, are truly a great threat for you and will lead to some really really tough match ups- if left un-adressed. Hope you take the advice to Heart
Where are the points coming from? The interceptors worked great and I should have won (IMO) all of the games that I lost. I still believe that mobility is the key to 6th edition and very few units are faster than them. They took me all the way up to table #4 in round 5 and I lost a game that I should have won.
Where are the points coming from? The interceptors worked great and I should have won (IMO) all of the games that I lost. I still believe that mobility is the key to 6th edition and very few units are faster than them. They took me all the way up to table #4 in round 5 and I lost a game that I should have won.
Possibly if 2x Interceptors haven't become a must for you(I personally have a must take unit,Purifiers), then I'd suggest possibly dropping one unit to open up room for the 2x Knights with HI or RPwJPand a squad of greyhunters as another scoring unit to take place of the interceptor unit you lost. Obviously you can't get in 2x SR's but.. yea dropping one squad of interceptors would probably do the trick. I totally understand why you run two of them I run one personally to get first blood/ tie up units of obliterators, pop back transports etc. and running one squad usually works for me. At the end of the day if what your doing works for you then my all means go for it , I'm not trying to change how you play, I just wanted to point out some glaring weaknesses that could possibly be minimized a little.
Here are my thoughts going into our game:
I can’t believe that Lyzz hit on 5 out of 6 deepstrikes (is she scattered she would mishap)
If only her one squad of screamers that misshaped rolled a 1-3 I would have killed them and won.
I can’t believe how many saves her last horror made to deny me first blood. If I get first blood I would have won.
I can’t believe she made so many saves on her screamers.
I can’t believe all of her flamer shots on Coteaz wounded.
I can’t believe that I lost!
We all know the feeling, hope you could laugh it off and enjoy the rest of the tournament though.
Hey jy2 quick question. Do you take notes during your game for your batreps? Or just document through the pictures with dice and stuff?
I've been wanting to start doing battle reports sort of like you sabrex and ailaros. But I keep forgetting what happened when even in the games I take pictures doh!
Chancetragedy wrote: Hey jy2 quick question. Do you take notes during your game for your batreps? Or just document through the pictures with dice and stuff?
I've been wanting to start doing battle reports sort of like you sabrex and ailaros. But I keep forgetting what happened when even in the games I take pictures doh!
The only notes I took was to jot down my (and my opponent's) psychic powers and the Warlord traits. Otherwise, plenty of pictures will tell the story and help me to remember things.
You just need to get in a habit to take pictures and to remember taking pictures. That's the only hard part, especially in a tournament where time is limited and you become so engrossed in your games.
I can’t believe that Lyzz hit on 5 out of 6 deepstrikes (is she scattered she would mishap)
If only her one squad of screamers that misshaped rolled a 1-3 I would have killed them and won.
I can’t believe how many saves her last horror made to deny me first blood. If I get first blood I would have won.
I can’t believe she made so many saves on her screamers.
I can’t believe all of her flamer shots on Coteaz wounded.
I can’t believe that I lost!
Other than that I had no thoughts before our game.
And Draigo was scoring for my warlord trait.
I know how you feel, buddy. I'm still going over in my head how the heck I lost my first game. I can't believe that either!
Chancetragedy wrote: Hey jy2 quick question. Do you take notes during your game for your batreps? Or just document through the pictures with dice and stuff?
I've been wanting to start doing battle reports sort of like you sabrex and ailaros. But I keep forgetting what happened when even in the games I take pictures doh!
Back when I wrote batreps like JY2 you can look at the pictures and they jog your memory.
There is a few things you have to do though...
#1. Remember to take pictures. This is hard at first, but after a while I remembered at the end of every turn to take a picture. Even then when I got into the habit, when a game got tight and I had to think a lot I forgot to take pictures.
#2. Have a big and bold turn counter. You need to see what turn it is and it will help you reconstruct the battle.
#3. Get a copy of your opponent's army list.
Sorry, heading out for dinner. Will finish batrep tonight.
rigeld2 wrote: jy2 - when I saw your gribblies laid out like that I knew what the payback was going to be.
Templates are annoying. I can't see where the BGNT objectives are but this is going to be interesting.. (Just finished turn 2)
Objectives are far away. We are playing Hammer and Anvil and my objectives are about 6" from my deployment. My opponent has a long ways to travel unless his interceptors can somehow survive (he's only got 1 unit of 1 and 1 unit of 3 guys left).
@blackmoor I just made a pretty significant turn counter for myself after I forgot what turn it was in my last tournament and almost lost because it. Its got a nice big neon green pointer and big black lettering, so Ill have that covered for the next time. I didn't even think to make sure that was in the picture so thanks for that idea, as that will be a great way to jog my memory later for descriptions and whatnot.
And tough break against lyzz, as an avid listener I enjoy your input on the podcast so it's a bummer to see stuff like that happen. Although to be fair you have to admit its kind of ironic and humorous to have that happen against what should be a HUGE advantage in shunt/Wquake.
@JY2 yah I started writing down warlord traits and psychic powers before every tournament game now after seeing you write that down as one of your pre-game citations. Also I love how you show kills and wounds with dice so I'm probably gonna rip that off haha.
@JY2 yah I started writing down warlord traits and psychic powers before every tournament game now after seeing you write that down as one of your pre-game citations. Also I love how you show kills and wounds with dice so I'm probably gonna rip that off haha.
Yeah, it's both a visual aid for the reader and also to let me know what and how many died in which combat/shooting. Help yourself to using anything in my reports you find useful.
Chancetragedy wrote: Hey jy2 quick question. Do you take notes during your game for your batreps? Or just document through the pictures with dice and stuff?
I've been wanting to start doing battle reports sort of like you sabrex and ailaros. But I keep forgetting what happened when even in the games I take pictures doh!
Back when I wrote batreps like JY2 you can look at the pictures and they jog your memory.
There is a few things you have to do though...
#1. Remember to take pictures. This is hard at first, but after a while I remembered at the end of every turn to take a picture. Even then when I got into the habit, when a game got tight and I had to think a lot I forgot to take pictures.
#2. Have a big and bold turn counter. You need to see what turn it is and it will help you reconstruct the battle.
#3. Get a copy of your opponent's army list.
QFT!
I didnt take pictures of my GT and so I am doing the entire report from memory. It is hard to do and surprisingly I am keeping a good account of what happened but the small details suffer here or there for it.
QFT!
I didnt take pictures of my GT and so I am doing the entire report from memory. It is hard to do and surprisingly I am keeping a good account of what happened but the small details suffer here or there for it.
For someone who has had to remember 6-7 games, that's quite some memory you've got! I wouldn't be able to do it. If I didn't take pictures, my reports would only be game summaries instead of battle reports.
Wow, well played Jy2. Stalling Draigo, hunting GK support units, and ignoring the Paladins helped the Nids achieve victory. It's nice having Iron Army monstrous creature holding onto Relic.
Nice try Blackmoor. It sucks to have model few millimeters away from contesting. Perhaps combating squad the Paladins would've helped. That way one unit can chase after the Relic and the other hold onto Big Guns objective.
Did Draigo go after the Zoeys for the consolidate move? Kind of risky but it paid off.
(Not that Draigo would die - rather that the zoeys would tie him up for a while)
The simple answer is yes.
He kept on screening and moving back the tervigon who had the relic with units so I came up with plan B. Move past the hive guard and get an additional assault move to the Zoanthropes and then when I hacked them down I would get a consolidation move. It is a good way to get extra movement out of a slow moving unit. If the game goes one more turn I should win the game. The primary is big guns never tire so I would have assaulted his biovores with Draigo and he would have contested that objective and would have gotten +1 VP for killing a heavy support choice and we would have ended up tied on objectives (1 each) giving me primary and him secondary.
I do not want to take anything away from JY2's win, but I was still thinking more about my last game than this game. I bunched up my units when he has biovores, and it did not help in turn #2 when I failed about 8 out of 10 saves from them. Also I did not cast Warp Quake which would slow down the Doom.
Still if was a great game. One of my favorite things to do in 40k is to try to figure out how I am going to win when I am way behind. I almost pulled it out, but not quite.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
SabrX wrote: Wow, well played Jy2. Stalling Draigo, hunting GK support units, and ignoring the Paladins helped the Nids achieve victory. It's nice having Iron Army monstrous creature holding onto Relic.
Nice try Blackmoor. It sucks to have model few millimeters away from contesting. Perhaps combating squad the Paladins would've helped. That way one unit can chase after the Relic and the other hold onto Big Guns objective.
Seems you two had an exciting match.
He played a great game. The problem was that whoever went first had a huge advantage with the relic. The person who went first would be on it turn #2. He could not take it away from me, and he could screen me from it when he picked it up.
JY2 knows his paladins and one of their big weakness is that you can screen them since they have to assault the unit that they shoot.
JY2 knows his paladins and one of their big weakness is that you can screen them since they have to assault the unit that they shoot.
True, but there is not much in the game that is able to stop their assault, and charging 2D6 and consolidating can be a huge movement bonus for them, I sometimes dont shoot with them, or do not shoot everything so I can tempt the charge for extra movement. It is however something close to Russian roulette then...
I do think however that you should have splitted them, taking 3 psycannons and Stave with Coteaz and taking Banner and 1 psycannon and 3 hammers with Draigo. He has no shooting to really hurt the paladins and it would give you options to shoot screening units. It would offer you a second Holocaust Template, which is quite good against the small grunts...
As always analysis is easier to make after the game than on beforehand...
Did Draigo go after the Zoeys for the consolidate move? Kind of risky but it paid off.
(Not that Draigo would die - rather that the zoeys would tie him up for a while)
Yeah. He did that I believe after Allan realized that he wouldn't be able to get to my tervigon.
Valek wrote: Remember that each wound is a instakill wound as Draigo is ST 10 against psykers...
Yeah, we remembered. That was how he killed my non-Iron Armed zoan.
Eldercaveman wrote: He had iron arm up on one of the zoeys so that gave him EW
And my stupid zoan had to perils while casting Iron Arm.
SabrX wrote: Wow, well played Jy2. Stalling Draigo, hunting GK support units, and ignoring the Paladins helped the Nids achieve victory. It's nice having Iron Army monstrous creature holding onto Relic.
Nice try Blackmoor. It sucks to have model few millimeters away from contesting. Perhaps combating squad the Paladins would've helped. That way one unit can chase after the Relic and the other hold onto Big Guns objective.
Seems you two had an exciting match.
Yeah, tyranids are good at any type of objectives-based scenarios thanks to monstrous troops who can go all the way up to T9. Though I still wouldn' want to tangle with the pallistar and all their S10 hammers!
Even contesting wouldn't have made a difference. He needed to contest and to kill my biovores to have any chance for a win.
Combat squadding would definitely have been a viable option. However, he would lose out on Coteaz's Prescience giving only half the unit re-roll's instead of the entire unit.
QFT!
I didnt take pictures of my GT and so I am doing the entire report from memory. It is hard to do and surprisingly I am keeping a good account of what happened but the small details suffer here or there for it.
For someone who has had to remember 6-7 games, that's quite some memory you've got! I wouldn't be able to do it. If I didn't take pictures, my reports would only be game summaries instead of battle reports.
It wasn't by design. Lol. I merely fotgot my camera.
He kept on screening and moving back the tervigon who had the relic with units so I came up with plan B. Move past the hive guard and get an additional assault move to the Zoanthropes and then when I hacked them down I would get a consolidation move. It is a good way to get extra movement out of a slow moving unit. If the game goes one more turn I should win the game. The primary is big guns never tire so I would have assaulted his biovores with Draigo and he would have contested that objective and would have gotten +1 VP for killing a heavy support choice and we would have ended up tied on objectives (1 each) giving me primary and him secondary.
I do not want to take anything away from JY2's win, but I was still thinking more about my last game than this game. I bunched up my units when he has biovores, and it did not help in turn #2 when I failed about 8 out of 10 saves from them. Also I did not cast Warp Quake which would slow down the Doom.
Still if was a great game. One of my favorite things to do in 40k is to try to figure out how I am going to win when I am way behind. I almost pulled it out, but not quite.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
SabrX wrote: Wow, well played Jy2. Stalling Draigo, hunting GK support units, and ignoring the Paladins helped the Nids achieve victory. It's nice having Iron Army monstrous creature holding onto Relic.
Nice try Blackmoor. It sucks to have model few millimeters away from contesting. Perhaps combating squad the Paladins would've helped. That way one unit can chase after the Relic and the other hold onto Big Guns objective.
Seems you two had an exciting match.
He played a great game. The problem was that whoever went first had a huge advantage with the relic. The person who went first would be on it turn #2. He could not take it away from me, and he could screen me from it when he picked it up.
JY2 knows his paladins and one of their big weakness is that you can screen them since they have to assault the unit that they shoot.
The zoan was a somewhat risky move. I thought that they could hold Draigo for maybe 2-3 combat phases. However, when I failed my charge against him, it just gave Draigo the extra movement that he needed to get closer to my objectives.
It would have been a good try but it still would have been tough for him to win it unless it went down to 7. Next turn (Turn 6), I would have surrounded Draigo with my gants to lock him in place. If he targeted the biovores (who I would have moved to the 2nd level of the ruins so that his flamer wouldn't have been able to hit both the gants and the biovores), then he would still be outside contesting range of the objective. If he went after my gants, he would have finished them off and we would both be contesting the objective. I would then win with the Relic.
Also, Blackmoor would have needed to get rid of my Warlord in order to even have a chance to win. Otherwise, the most he could have done was to tie even if he had won the Primary.
Yeah, not casting Warp Quake was another mistake. He cast it the previous turn when my Doom didn't show up but then forgot to cast it on T3 when my Doom did finally show up. I think he was quite stunned at losing most of his interceptors the previous turn so he was thinking more about how to preserve them from my flyrant rather than to anticipate the Doom next turn.
Going 1st was huge in this game. So was the roll to pick sides/deployment zones. I somehow managed to get both, which gave me a big advantage in this game. And yeah, being a Draigowing player myself, I am quite familiar with how to play against them.
JY2 knows his paladins and one of their big weakness is that you can screen them since they have to assault the unit that they shoot.
True, but there is not much in the game that is able to stop their assault, and charging 2D6 and consolidating can be a huge movement bonus for them, I sometimes dont shoot with them, or do not shoot everything so I can tempt the charge for extra movement. It is however something close to Russian roulette then...
I do think however that you should have splitted them, taking 3 psycannons and Stave with Coteaz and taking Banner and 1 psycannon and 3 hammers with Draigo. He has no shooting to really hurt the paladins and it would give you options to shoot screening units. It would offer you a second Holocaust Template, which is quite good against the small grunts...
As always analysis is easier to make after the game than on beforehand...
Yeah, sometimes it's better not to shoot. You don't want to overkill your target and deny yourself a charge.
Combat squadding is definitely a viable tactic. However, I find that with Coteaz and Prescience in the army, it is just too tempting to keep them (the deathstar) together in order to maximize on his benefits.
Fikol wrote: great bat reps! It feels as if I was there!
Valek wrote: Remember that each wound is a instakill wound as Draigo is ST 10 against psykers...
And they have a 3++ save so its not about taking time to kill them, it's about a decent run of saves tying Draigo up.
Yeah. It's just too bad I suck at making 3++ saves.
Tomb King wrote: It wasn't by design. Lol. I merely fotgot my camera.
Haha....I just hate it when that happens. You get all pumped up and excited about documenting your experiences....only to find that you don't have your camera with you (or that its batteries are dead). Oh well, at least you can still enjoy the experience.
jy2 wrote: The zoan was a somewhat risky move. I thought that they could hold Draigo for maybe 2-3 combat phases. However, when I failed my charge against him, it just gave Draigo the extra movement that he needed to get closer to my objectives.
I thought I should hack you down in 2 player’s turns which is all I needed since I was not going to be doing anything on your turn.
It would have been a good try but it still would have been tough for him to win it unless it went down to 7. Next turn (Turn 6), I would have surrounded Draigo with my gants to lock him in place. If he targeted the biovores (who I would have moved to the 2nd level of the ruins so that his flamer wouldn't have been able to hit both the gants and the biovores), then he would still be outside contesting range of the objective. If he went after my gants, he would have finished them off and we would both be contesting the objective. I would then win with the Relic.
Synapse was a long ways away, so moving anything might not happen.
Also, Blackmoor would have needed to get rid of my Warlord in order to even have a chance to win. Otherwise, the most he could have done was to tie even if he had won the Primary.
I can shoot a Hive Tyrant out of the air with the paladins shooting. The turn before you made a lot of saves/FNP and you would have to do that again to stay alive (also if I could knock you down I could assault and finish it).
I do think however that you should have splitted them, taking 3 psycannons and Stave with Coteaz and taking Banner and 1 psycannon and 3 hammers with Draigo. He has no shooting to really hurt the paladins and it would give you options to shoot screening units. It would offer you a second Holocaust Template, which is quite good against the small grunts...
This is where our first game worked for you and against me. Because you came after the paladins in our first games I was reluctant to split them up. This let you see what they can do to your army and let you know that you could not deal with them. Also because I switched out Draigo for a GM my army it is a lot more resilient and can kill your TMC without working up a sweat (Iron Arm or not) and I should have split them.
Yeah, sometimes it's better not to shoot. You don't want to overkill your target and deny yourself a charge.
As a Draigowing player this is important to know when to do what. Against Lyzz I did not shoot at her one turn so I could get a giant multi-charge in that got me back into that game. You need to know when to assault and when to shoot.
Combat squading is definitely a viable tactic. However, I find that with Coteaz and Prescience in the army, it is just too tempting to keep them (the deathstar) together in order to maximize on his benefits.
I almost always combat squad the paladins. The reason why is that they have too much shooting and durability to be locked into just one squad. That is why I tell everyone to not go for the super paladin deathstar with the apothecary and techmarine. Having the one squad of 10 paladins is just not flexible enough for most games.
You still had a chance, but IMO it would have been very tough to do so. While not impossible, a number of things would have had to happen for you to pull it off. Who knows, had the game continued, maybe you could have....but of course, I would have done everything in my power to stop you.
Going into my final game, I am currently 4-1-1. Janthkin, unfortunately, just lost his 2nd game in a row and is now at 4-2. In the table just ahead of me (I'm on table #10) are 2 tyranid players battling it out (on table #9) so I thought for sure I was out of the running. One of them is probably 5-1 currently and unless they tie, one of them will probably end up 6-1 and win the title of Best Tyranid. Anyways, winning Best Tyranids is not on my mind right now as I have to go up against another tough Draigowing army, this time with 3 dreadknights!
Game #7 vs Draigowing Grey Knights
How ironic that I start the tournament playing against one of my Game Kastle mates and I will end the tournament against another one of my Game Kastle mates. This time, I go up against Bobby's (aka Grey Therion) Draigowing Grey Knights. The last time I played against him, he was thinking about bringing a Purifier GK list to the BAO:
However, after having not very much success with them (his purifiers), he finally decided to bring his low model-count paladin list to the BAO instead. And so far in the tournament, he has been doing a decent job with them. Coming into our game, he is at a very respectable 4-2 with an army of only 16 models!
Mission:Bay Area Open Scenario #7 - Emperor's Will (4pts) & Crusade (3pts)
The way the BAO scenarios work is this. There are always 2 book missions, one worth 4 points and the other worth 3 points. There are also the 3 bonus points - First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker - for a possible total of 10 points. Whoever gets the most points wins. In scenario #7, Crusade is worth 3-points and Emperor's Will worth 4-points.
Despite the low number of models in Bobby's army, this is not going to be an easy fight:
- He's got all 2+ saves. My shooting isn't very effective against 2+ units.
- Against this type of army, I need Iron Arm. I only get 1 Iron Arm on my MC's (again, on my non-Warlord flyrant). Thus, I can't play very aggressively with my tervigons, not when he has a Brotherhood Banner in his paladinstar and he's sporting 3 dreadknights with S10 doomfists.
- Those 3 dreadknights are going to be a pain. 1 I can easily handle. 2 is a challenge, especially without Iron Arm. 3 and now I am forced to play defensively.
- Soladins are going to split up my "resources". They are both a threat to my gribblies with Holocaust and to my MC's with their force weapon daemon hammers. But more importantly, they will threaten my objectives. Basically, anything that draws my "attention" means I will have less resources to deal with his main body of his paladinstar and 3 dreadknights. And believe me, I am going to need my full force against his main offense.
However, I do have certain advantages against my opponent:
- I've got the volume-of-attacks that my opponent so fears.
- I've got enough gribblies to tie up some of his guys at a time. I can then focus on the guys not held up by my gribblies.
- While I did not get very many Iron Arms, I did get 2 Enfeebles. Enfeeble is going to be very useful in this game. Of course, his dreadknights will be getting a 5+ Deny and his paladinstar a 4+ Deny attempt, but nothing's perfect. In any case, Enfeeble + TL-Devourers from my flyrants = bad news for his paladins.
- Flyrants. He doesn't have much that can shoot down a swooping monstrous creautre.
- I've already played against Bobby's army (or rather, a variation of it) before. At the time, I used my casual, spam-less, non-competitive fun-crons and still won. Now I am using a much more optimized and competitive army.
- Intimidation. I've got the intimidation factor. At our LGS, both Janthkin and my tyranids are highly feared. Every time I've played against Bobby, his army has struggled. So going into the match, I think that's got to be in his mind....how good and how tough my bugs are.
Strategy-wise, I can't afford to play very aggressively against his army, especially not with his paladinstar supported by 3 dreadknights (or his 3 dreadknights protected by his paladinstar). So my plan is the screen them off and try to hold them in their deployment zone (or at least as far away from my main force as possible). I should be able to contest his Emperor's Will objective easily with my flyrants or even the Doom perhaps.
So ok gentlemen....place your bets.
Pre-Game Thoughts: A Daemonhunter's Perspective (by Bobby)
As JY2 Correctly points out, I was tinkering around with Purifiers in 6th Edition but just had horrible luck with them (2Wins, 2Draws, 7 Losses)! As the Bay Area Open was getting closer and closer I found myself without an army! Finally, 2 weeks before the event I committed myself to attending the BAO, dusted off Draigo, bought a third Dreadknight and begged James R. to paint the 6-7 models that still didn't have as much a primer coat! While there are many competitive builds for the current Grey Knight Codex, I wanted to bring something fun and fluffy, so I came up with the idea of packing the maximum number of Dreadknights, followed up by the second highest number of Soladins (or Tactical Dreadknights as I like to call them). Add in a small squad of paladins, Draigo and a Malleus Inquisitor and you have an army of 17 models, all of them as good as an average HQ! I never expected, even in my wildest dreams to get more than 1 or 2 victories throughout the whole event because my list is not all that competitive at all, so imagine my surprise when I ended up playing games on such high tables like 7, 9 and in this game 10!! Unfortunately, my list has very little flexibility AND I had played against an almost identical list earlier in the tournament so I had an excellent idea of how hard of a fight this will be!
Deployment and Plan:
When JY2 says that he will "play defensively", don't believe him! This is a tournament, he wants to be sure he has time to win and win decisively!!! Maybe he wants to play on D but I know that he will be attacking while not over committing his forces. I think that I will loose the game, but I want to give my army a chance to win if I get a few lucky dice rolls (such as a flyrant failing a grounding test in front of Draigo). I am going to place the objectives as close to each other as possible on one of the table sides, deploy Draigo, paladins, inquisitor and the 3 Dreadknights really close to each other and take the brunt of the Tyranid attack. With a bit of luck, have all my reserves come in by Turn 2 or 3 and launch a full counter attack (abandoning my home objective in the process)! In other words, I will try to fight the Nids piecemeal: forward assault wave (usually gargoyles, flyrants), mid-fielders and finally the back line.
The knights advance, after casting Prescience, of course
His paladins are out of range of my tervigon so fire at the gargoyles, killing 7.
His dreadknights then run.
Tyranids 1
Spoiler:
I cast my psychic powers and Enfeeble his far-left dreadknight to reduce him to T5.
Tyranids then advance. Flyrants swoop and stay behind the ruins for cover.
I focus my entire army on the Enfeebled dreadknight - both flyrants and my biovores - and manage to bring him down for First Blood.
1 down. 2 more to go.
Grey Knights 2
Spoiler:
His raven and 2 soladins come in.
His army then advances.
Wow, I make the mistake of putting my zoans too close to my tervigon. His raven, firing 2 mindstrike missiles and his 2 guns, take off 4W from the tervigon. The mindstrikes also kill 1 zoanthrope and put 1W on the other zoan.
Holocaust from a soladin and also the heavy incinerator from a dreadknight also kills 6 gants as well.
Tyranids 2
Spoiler:
The tyranid onslaught. Tervigon spawns 9 gants, who advance. Flyrants swoop. I Enfeeble another dreadknight.
When I said that I will be playing defensively, I meant my tervigons will be playing less aggressively. As you can see, they are hanging back. However, I still need to push the rest of my army forwards. I need to stop my opponent from advancing towards the objectives. That is my philosophy of Positional Dominance. I can't let my opponent get to the center of the board where he will be in easy striking range of all my units as well as threatening the objectives. I need to contain him in his side of the table. This way, I will have the tactical advantage. Even if he kills all my guys there, he will be out of position and I will have the objectives already. So while I am playing much more conservatively with my tervigons, my army will still be aggressive on the whole.
Also, if you will notice, I am preventing him from advancing by screening him out. Swooping flyrants will be in his way (unless he can ground it with his limited shooting) and gants will charge his front dreadknight, thus causing a bottleneck.
The rest of my army then moves. BTW, the right, wounded tervigon is on the objective which halves your charge distance. That will come into play later on.
Hive guards insta-kill a soladin.
Both flyrants and the gants manage to strip his dreadknight of 3W with their shooting.
My biovores have an amazing turn of shooting. 4 pie plates happen to kill 1 from his paladinstar as well as take 3W off of Draigo!!!
Gants then charge. I lose a couple to his Overwatch.
Once again, the gants triumph over the big bad nasty. They kill off his dreadknight. However, there is only 2 left, who then go to screen out his other dreadknight with their consolidate move.
Things are looking downright bad for my opponent!
Grey Knights 3
Spoiler:
His last soladin comes in far away from the action. I think his role is to survive so I can't table my opponent.
The raven continues flying forwards.
Dreadknight and paladins are forced to go around the 2 measly gants. Gants....you've just got to love those cuddly little critters.
Despite being T8 from Iron Arm, the paladins (and 1 PotMS lascannon from the stormraven) puts 3W on my flyrant. Fortunately for me, he fails to ground my flyrant.
Heavy incinerator from his dreadknight hits and kills 8 bunched up gants.
His soladin then assaults my right wounded tervigon and we both kill each other....not!
Bobby remembers about the objective which halves the charge distance (I didn't) and thus that assault is voided as his soladin fails to make the charge.
Tyranids 3
Spoiler:
The Doom comes in.
This turn, I Enfeeble the paladins. Both flyrants continue to swoop. I am going to do nasty things to those paladins with my twin-linked devourers.
It is now the gargoyles turn to tie up his dreadknight.
Right terivgon poops out 14 gants before calling it a day as a gant-pooper.
My last unit of gants come in and spread out on my Emperor's Will objective.
The rest of my army moves and goes after the objectives.
In my shooting phase, the paladins make a ton of saves and only lose 2 to Spirit Leech, my 2 flyrants and the biovores.
The dreadknight, however, is not as lucky. He takes 3W to my gargoyles, 2 gants and hive guard shooting!
Gants charge in first and lose 1 to the dreadknight's Overwatch. The gargoyles then safely charge in as well.
The other gants fail to cause an unsaved wound with their shooting and then charge in as well. Combat is tied with 1W apiece.
Dreadknight just cannot stand up to the gribblies. He kills off the gant and a couple of gargoyles before dying. Gargoyles then consolidate into the way of his palliestar. Sorry, buddies, you ain't going anywhere.
Grey Knights 4
Spoiler:
My opponent makes 1 last desperation attempt to at least kill 1 flyrant.
The Doom kills his soladin with Spirit Leech to deny him any chance for his Emperor's Will objective.
He is going after my Warlord (with FNP). If he can ground my flyrant, he can kill it in assault. It will be a moral victory.
Unfortunately, I would deny him even that little pleasure as my Warlord refuses to fall to the ground.
I have both the Primary (Emperor's Will) and the Secondary (Crusade). I've got First Blood and Linebreaker and am pretty sure I can get his Warlord (with just 1W left) in the 2+ turns that I have left.
With that, my opponent concedes.
Crushing Victory by Hive Fleet Pandora!!!
Coming up later....Post-game Analsis as well as my Tournament Results and Analysis.
That was a rough game for Bobby. He played somewhat tentatively/over-cautiously and it costed him. He was never able to make it far enough to be an actual threat to my army. Had he advanced more aggressively with his army and then dropped all his soladins to help support his core units, I might have had a tougher time dealing with all his units at once. But the way he played, he gave me ample time to focus on 1 unit at a time. That might have been the intimidation factor at work there. But in my opponent's defense, he wasn't rolling real well on his dreadknight saves. Losing his very first dreadknight to my opening volley of fire (and First Blood as well) might have set the tone for the game. I was actually concerned about this matchup, but getting rid of the first dreadknight then relieved a lot of the pressure for me.
Good game, Bobby. Eventually, you will get your revenge against my bugs one of these days or you can take it out on my new daemons.
This tournament analysis is more focused on my experiences rather than a review of the actual venue itself. I'm sure there are already enough reviews about the venue, so the only thing I have to say about that is that I will definitely be back next year.
So as we all know, there were a few Firsts in this tournament. It was the First major tournament in the US with Forgeworld allowed. It was the First major tournament with a women as the winner. This was the First time for me going to the Bay Area Open GT. This was the First time I brought tyranids to a major competition. I had high hopes going into the tournament. I actually believed that tyranids can win a major tournament (still do). Unfortunately, my dream came crashing down in just my very First game. What should have been a very winnable game for me became instead a disaster to my hopes and dreams. In what I can only describe as an upset, my first round opponent played well and I made a mistake that, along with a few dice rolls that didn't go my way, cost me the game. From then on, I have had to adjust my expectations. The tournament championship was already out of reach so I was forced to aim a little lower. But with the amount of fierce competition in this tournament, I was happy to go for the title of Best Tyranid player. I knew it would be no easy feat considering I was already starting behind most of the other bug players (who were 1-0 at the time), but if I played well and didn't lose any more games, I knew I had a chance to do so. My opponent would go on to a respectable 4-3 record.
Game #2 was against a dangerous IG foe. Fortunately for me, luck was on my side this game as I turned what should have been a close game into a route. My opponent took it pretty well, but I could tell he was as deflated this game as I was in my first game. There is that feeling of helplessness when the dice just doesn't go your way.
Game #3 was a game I was very much looking forwards to. I got to play against whigwam and his very brutal daemons. Fortunately, I've had practice against his army while he didn't have any practice against my army. I think my experience was the difference here as I knew exactly what to do against his daemons whereas he was unsure what to do against my bugs. Despite the stumble on the part of my opponent, he actually ended up doing great in the tournament. He would go on to win the rest of his games for an excellent 5-2 record, ending up 19th overall and winning Best Daemon player as well.
Game #4 was just a mismatch for my opponent. His army really wasn't geared towards fighting my bugs and it showed. But I've got say, my opponent here was one of the nicest opponents I have played against.
Then it's on to Day #2 for some more tough competition. Little did I know that I would end up playing against 3 grey knight players!
My first opponent for the day - my Game #5 - I knew was going to be a challenge to play against. He brought dual GK stormravens which are actually very good against nids due to their Mindstrike missiles. I was fortunate to get Iron Arm on both of my flyrants. This was a difference-maker and I was ahead for practically the entire game. However, my opponent played well enough to eke out the Draw (thanks to a mistake on my part). After this game, I was sure that I would be out of the running for Best Tyranids at 3-1-1. BTW, my opponent, Ben, would end the tournament 32nd out of 144 with a very respectable 4-2-1 record.
In Game #6, I knew it was going to be another tough game. I've played against Blackmoor before and he beat me in our first game. I knew that going into the game, it would be much better to try to avoid his deathstar this time around and go after his support units instead. My strategy worked out great as I was ahead for most of the game. This was also the only game where my tyranids went first. Combined that with picking the right sides and I had a big advantage from the get-go that my opponent just could not overcome (he might have, but the game ended naturally before he could get a chance). Day #2 was just not his day, losing tight, close games to both me and the eventual winner of the BAO, Liz Foster.
Finally, I would end the tournament in the same way I started the tournament - by playing against another of my mates from my LGS. Game #7 was another game that had me slightly concerned. However, any concern of mine was gone with my first kill and I knew that this game was mine for the taking. My opponent, Bobby, actually did much better than even he had expected. He actually came into the tournament with the expectation that he his army would get crushed in tournament play. He would leave with a 4-3 record and some respect for his unorthodox paladin grey knights.
So when it came down to the tournament results, I was listening only half-heartedly. Kingsley from my LGS won the award for Best Space Marines, going 5-2 and ending the day in 26th place. Janthkin also did very well, going 5-2 as well for 25th. SabrX missed out by just a few points for Best Tau player, ending his run at 5-2 as well for 23rd place. Lastly, Grey Therion (Bobby) finished in the Top 50 as well with his Draigowing grey knights. I only lost 1 game the entire tournament and ended up with an excellent 5-1-1 record. Despite my record, however, I was almost sure that there would be a bug player who finished 6-1. Then when Reece announced the winner for Best Tyranids, he started by saying, " And the winner for Best Tyranids goes to my arch-rival..." Right there, a smile crossed my face as I already knew what the result would be - I had won the award for Best Tyranid. I also ended up 9th out of 144 players. Well, it isn't the Top 5, but I can't really complain. I am more than content with my finish.
Thank you all for your journey along with me in such an incredible experience. And come next year, I'm not settling for another Top 10 performance. I aim to win it all. See you all next year!
Good to see grey knights putiing up a decent fight, game 1, 5, 6 and hopefully 7 all looked to be fun close games.
Its a shame not seeing any near the top though, but I guess that really is an indication of where we are in 6th.
I managed to change round my draigowing list slightly for the biggest tournie in Nz this week. Having interceptors, strikes, and a vendetta with meltavets to help support my deathstar.
Anyway look forward to reading your last bat rep jy
jy2 wrote: Going into my final game, I am currently 4-1-1. Janthkin, unfortunately, just lost his 2nd game in a row and is now at 4-2.
Just a quick note-- while you and Blackmoor were battling it out, Janthkin and I were playing right behind you in the next row! You can actually see my back in your picture of Blackmoor-- I'm the guy wearing the light blue shirt and grey pants. Janthkin and I had a crazy battle but ultimately I ended up pulling it out, thanks in no small part to some hot dice-- for instance, my Command Suit fired his TLMP and Quad-gun at a swooping Flyrant, scoring 4 wounds. All 4 3+ saves failed and then all 4 5+ FNPs failed, giving me First Blood!
I love/hate when that happens. Something similar happened to me at Railhead - Tesla Destructor from a Night Scythe generates 10 hits, only one wound on my Flyrant with 3 wounds. Yay!
Make armor save, fail grounding test. Make FNP.
Arcs to other Flyrant (unwounded). 4 hits. 4 wounds. 4 failed saves.
And then some immortals finished off the first Flyrant.
Use Iron Arm, perils, but still get to toughness 9, swoop into some terrain. Doom Scythe causes 4 wounds (despite needing 6s to wound, my friend can roll 6s like no one else) and I fail 3 saves, opponent gets Slay the Warlord and First Blood, I lose my mobile synapse, Hive Commander and reroll reserves Warlord trait (in a heavy reserves list), next turn no synapse units arrived from reserves, leaving me with no Synapse on board. Needless to say, I was sad.
tuiman wrote: Good to see grey knights putiing up a decent fight, game 1, 5, 6 and hopefully 7 all looked to be fun close games.
Its a shame not seeing any near the top though, but I guess that really is an indication of where we are in 6th.
I managed to change round my draigowing list slightly for the biggest tournie in Nz this week. Having interceptors, strikes, and a vendetta with meltavets to help support my deathstar.
Anyway look forward to reading your last bat rep jy
The knights are still good. I especially like S5-stormbolter striker builds. However, the proliferation of heldrakes have made this a difficult battle indeed. I think the knights have lost their top-tier status, but they can still do well especially when you consider some allies for them. I believe Andrew Gonyo (aka Target) won the Battle for Salvation GT with a GK striker/IG blob squad build. But yeah, it seems like necrons and allied armies are now the new top dogs. Almost every army who won a GT currently (except for Tzeentch daemons and my pure necrons) have included allies in them.
jy2 wrote: Going into my final game, I am currently 4-1-1. Janthkin, unfortunately, just lost his 2nd game in a row and is now at 4-2.
Just a quick note-- while you and Blackmoor were battling it out, Janthkin and I were playing right behind you in the next row! You can actually see my back in your picture of Blackmoor-- I'm the guy wearing the light blue shirt and grey pants. Janthkin and I had a crazy battle but ultimately I ended up pulling it out, thanks in no small part to some hot dice-- for instance, my Command Suit fired his TLMP and Quad-gun at a swooping Flyrant, scoring 4 wounds. All 4 3+ saves failed and then all 4 5+ FNPs failed, giving me First Blood!
You don't say....
That's 2 flyrants now that you've downed with just 1 unit shooting....both Kevin's and my flyrant. Maybe we should call your army Space Taurines, the Bugslayers.
rigeld2 wrote: I love/hate when that happens. Something similar happened to me at Railhead - Tesla Destructor from a Night Scythe generates 10 hits, only one wound on my Flyrant with 3 wounds. Yay!
Make armor save, fail grounding test. Make FNP.
Arcs to other Flyrant (unwounded). 4 hits. 4 wounds. 4 failed saves.
And then some immortals finished off the first Flyrant.
PrinceRaven wrote: Use Iron Arm, perils, but still get to toughness 9, swoop into some terrain. Doom Scythe causes 4 wounds (despite needing 6s to wound, my friend can roll 6s like no one else) and I fail 3 saves, opponent gets Slay the Warlord and First Blood, I lose my mobile synapse, Hive Commander and reroll reserves Warlord trait (in a heavy reserves list), next turn no synapse units arrived from reserves, leaving me with no Synapse on board. Needless to say, I was sad.
In my first game, something similar to that happened to my flyrant as well. My opponent shoots at my swoop flyrant and wounds him 3 times. I then fail all 3 saves and then die from the Grounding.
I also had a game against Kingsley in which he shoots down my swooping flyrant with just 1 unit shooting - his Shas'el on a quad-gun. That also gave him First Blood and Warlord as well.
As JY2 Correctly points out, I was tinkering around with Purifiers in 6th Edition but just had horrible luck with them (2Wins, 2Draws, 7 Losses)! As the Bay Area Open was getting closer and closer I found myself without an army! Finally, 2 weeks before the event I committed myself to attending the BAO, dusted off Draigo, bought a third Dreadknight and begged James R. to paint the 6-7 models that still didn't have as much a primer coat! While there are many competitive builds for the current Grey Knight Codex, I wanted to bring something fun and fluffy, so I came up with the idea of packing the maximum number of Dreadknights, followed up by the second highest number of Soladins (or Tactical Dreadknights as I like to call them). Add in a small squad of paladins, Draigo and a Malleus Inquisitor and you have an army of 17 models, all of them as good as an average HQ! I never expected, even in my wildest dreams to get more than 1 or 2 victories throughout the whole event because my list is not all that competitive at all, so imagine my surprise when I ended up playing games on such high tables like 7, 9 and in this game 10!! Unfortunately, my list has very little flexibility AND I had played against an almost identical list earlier in the tournament so I had an excellent idea of how hard of a fight this will be!
Deployment and Plan:
When JY2 says that he will "play defensively", don't believe him! This is a tournament, he wants to be sure he has time to win and win decisively!!! Maybe he wants to play on D but I know that he will be attacking while not over committing his forces. I think that I will loose the game, but I want to give my army a chance to win if I get a few lucky dice rolls (such as a flyrant failing a grounding test in front of Draigo). I am going to place the objectives as close to each other as possible on one of the table sides, deploy Draigo, paladins, inquisitor and the 3 Dreadknights really close to each other and take the brunt of the Tyranid attack. With a bit of luck, have all my reserves come in by Turn 2 or 3 and launch a full counter attack (abandoning my home objective in the process)! In other words, I will try to fight the Nids piecemeal: forward assault wave (usually gargoyles, flyrants), mid-fielders and finally the back line.
tuiman wrote: Good to see grey knights putiing up a decent fight, game 1, 5, 6 and hopefully 7 all looked to be fun close games.
Its a shame not seeing any near the top though, but I guess that really is an indication of where we are in 6th.
I managed to change round my draigowing list slightly for the biggest tournie in Nz this week. Having interceptors, strikes, and a vendetta with meltavets to help support my deathstar.
Anyway look forward to reading your last bat rep jy
The knights are still good. I especially like S5-stormbolter striker builds. However, the proliferation of heldrakes have made this a difficult battle indeed. I think the knights have lost their top-tier status, but they can still do well especially when you consider some allies for them. I believe Andrew Gonyo (aka Target) won the Battle for Salvation GT with a GK striker/IG blob squad build. But yeah, it seems like necrons and allied armies are now the new top dogs. Almost every army who won a GT currently (except for Tzeentch daemons and my pure necrons) have included allies in them.
Well yes they are competitve as long as you don't see hell drakes, as i already demonstrated in my ETC testing, but with them in a pure spam is impossible. I think atm the combination of Strikers & palladins is the way to go, it also offers enought firepower to down 1 or 2 flyers even with AV12.
As already stated no army atm is a win against all, maybe now with deamon flamer/screamer spam out people will start making different lists, as otherwise that army stomped you hard.
tuiman wrote:
Good to see grey knights putiing up a decent fight, game 1, 5, 6 and hopefully 7 all looked to be fun close games.
Its a shame not seeing any near the top though, but I guess that really is an indication of where we are in 6th.
I managed to change round my draigowing list slightly for the biggest tournie in Nz this week. Having interceptors, strikes, and a vendetta with meltavets to help support my deathstar.
Anyway look forward to reading your last bat rep jy
The knights are still good. I especially like S5-stormbolter striker builds. However, the proliferation of heldrakes have made this a difficult battle indeed. I think the knights have lost their top-tier status, but they can still do well especially when you consider some allies for them. I believe Andrew Gonyo (aka Target) won the Battle for Salvation GT with a GK striker/IG blob squad build. But yeah, it seems like necrons and allied armies are now the new top dogs. Almost every army who won a GT currently (except for Tzeentch daemons and my pure necrons) have included allies in them.
Well yes they are competitve as long as you don't see hell drakes, as i already demonstrated in my ETC testing, but with them in a pure spam is impossible. I think atm the combination of Strikers & palladins is the way to go, it also offers enought firepower to down 1 or 2 flyers even with AV12.
As already stated no army atm is a win against all, maybe now with deamon flamer/screamer spam out people will start making different lists, as otherwise that army stomped you hard.
I do agree with all of you that Grey Knights are no longer the field and win army anymore but by no means have they dropped from being top teir. Heldrakes are a problem no questions asked but to an extent that's because not many Grey Knight players have adapted to the task of ignoring or tanking through them yet. For example take into acount one heldrake is nothing, 2 is a problem but if you get to there side of the field and leave them nothing to shoot with then they are hardly a problem. This is where Blackmoore's list is a showing of utilizng interceptors to shunt his force and keep his guys out of the line of fire. His paladins don't care for ap3 flamers and if he were to go against a heldrake army he'd have no problems. Implementing the same style of play would be like putting inquisitors or librarians with terminator armor onto strikes/ purifiers to tank through the flamers. Dreadknights can take out virtually anything in a chaos army, and interceptors with ward staves can tie up and win against virtually any unit in a chaos army, if you can beat chaos you can beat just about anything. Ideally speaking grey knight players can't look towards spamming in this edition to be a top teir force, neither can they look towards SR's. 2 SR are not gonna fight 4 night scythes and doom sychtes. They really need to focus on quality. I'd like to see a chaos army take on a librarian and grand master led army with 2 full purifier squads, Utilizing an interceptor squad or deepstriking dreadknight to distract, tie up, possibly even taking out units, add in 2x strikes squads and now you've got a fully scoring army practically that can deepstrike on to the chaos side to ignore strikes while the 2 purifier units make their way up the field practically unscathed. Such strategy could be implemented against many other armies. Bring on the Necron wraithwing and lets see who wins in the battle of attrition between our 2+ and wardstaves possibly re-rollable if taken a libby and their unvul saves as opposed to role over and die. That is the style of play of GK that will win tournaments, Tanky, quick and hard hitting is the new name of the game for GK.
Well that's my 2 sense. On with the Battle Report!
Well yes they are competitve as long as you don't see hell drakes, as i already demonstrated in my ETC testing, but with them in a pure spam is impossible. I think atm the combination of Strikers & palladins is the way to go, it also offers enought firepower to down 1 or 2 flyers even with AV12. As already stated no army atm is a win against all, maybe now with deamon flamer/screamer spam out people will start making different lists, as otherwise that army stomped you hard.
Yeah, I like the combination of paladins and strikers as well, though I lean more towards more bodies. Perhaps a Draigo build with 5-6 paladins, Coteaz, strikers, 1 cheap henchmen unit in a stormraven and dreadknights/psyflemen. Now that the new daemons can be insta-killed, I think psyfleman dreads are going to be popular once again.
I do agree with all of you that Grey Knights are no longer the field and win army anymore but by no means have they dropped from being top teir. Heldrakes are a problem no questions asked but to an extent that's because not many Grey Knight players have adapted to the task of ignoring or tanking through them yet. For example take into acount one heldrake is nothing, 2 is a problem but if you get to there side of the field and leave them nothing to shoot with then they are hardly a problem. This is where Blackmoore's list is a showing of utilizng interceptors to shunt his force and keep his guys out of the line of fire. His paladins don't care for ap3 flamers and if he were to go against a heldrake army he'd have no problems. Implementing the same style of play would be like putting inquisitors or librarians with terminator armor onto strikes/ purifiers to tank through the flamers. Dreadknights can take out virtually anything in a chaos army, and interceptors with ward staves can tie up and win against virtually any unit in a chaos army, if you can beat chaos you can beat just about anything. Ideally speaking grey knight players can't look towards spamming in this edition to be a top teir force, neither can they look towards SR's. 2 SR are not gonna fight 4 night scythes and doom sychtes. They really need to focus on quality. I'd like to see a chaos army take on a librarian and grand master led army with 2 full purifier squads, Utilizing an interceptor squad or deepstriking dreadknight to distract, tie up, possibly even taking out units, add in 2x strikes squads and now you've got a fully scoring army practically that can deepstrike on to the chaos side to ignore strikes while the 2 purifier units make their way up the field practically unscathed. Such strategy could be implemented against many other armies. Bring on the Necron wraithwing and lets see who wins in the battle of attrition between our 2+ and wardstaves possibly re-rollable if taken a libby and their unvul saves as opposed to role over and die. That is the style of play of GK that will win tournaments, Tanky, quick and hard hitting is the new name of the game for GK.
Well that's my 2 sense. On with the Battle Report!
You really can't keep your interceptors out of the line of fire of the heldrakes. Not when they can go into Hover mode and they have a 360 degree torrent weapon. Other than hiding behind LOS-blocking terrain or in a vehicle/building, MEQ armies will struggle against double/triple-dragon lists. The paladins are good against heldrakes, however. As a matter of fact, I think Chaos Space Marines have brought paladins back to life in a way....as will the new Chaos Daemons bring psyfleman dreads back to life. Dreadknights are good but they will get massacred by certain Chaos builds. Why? Because of obliterators. 6 twin-linked plasma shots will just kill dreadknights. I played against a Coteaz-triple-DK list in a tournament and I just took out his dreadknights with Abaddon and my 6 oblits with relative ease. And if they don't take them out, they can easily tarpit the DK's with cheap-as-chips zombies. Warding staves aren't all that common anymore and most GK nemesis weapons other than hammers and doomfists will have problems against Chaos with 2+ saves (Abaddon, Typhus, terminators, T5 oblits). Grey Knights can still beat Chaos Marines, but it isn't as one-sided as it used to be. The current Chaos army might not be top-tier, but they've got some depth actually.
Necrons are another army that will give grey knights problems. Not because they are better in shooting or assault, but because they can easily out-maneuver the knights. I think the standard currently are the crons. If the army can beat a good necron army, then it can handle just about anything.
Hey jy2 another batrep question. Do you use any special setting on your camera for your photos? They are very crisp and always seem to have good focus. Is that more just your eye for a picture or do you do anything special? I got 2-3 games coming up on Saturday and I plan to do batreps for them with my new Fuji s4300.
Chancetragedy wrote: Hey jy2 another batrep question. Do you use any special setting on your camera for your photos? They are very crisp and always seem to have good focus. Is that more just your eye for a picture or do you do anything special? I got 2-3 games coming up on Saturday and I plan to do batreps for them with my new Fuji s4300.
No, nothing special on my camera....other than the camera itself. I just use Auto for the most part. However, for a sub-$500 camera, my camera - the Panasonice Lumix LX-5 is an amazing camera. Of all the cameras I've owned (which isn't actually a whole lot), it takes some of the best pictures, even in less-than-optimal lighting conditions.
I then edit my photos somewhat using Picasa - in particular the brightness and contrast - before uploading it onto Photobucket.com which hosts my pictures.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
tetsuo666 wrote: Jy2, i like when you post a battle report ....and here there are (will) 7 !!! A dream !
Thanks !
Thanks. I will finish this report tonight when I have a little more time.
Always Nids . Yer you will get mismatches and GK's are about the worst for a list like yours . But you will also table a lot of army's with that list and . The main thing is it does not matter if you play friendly games or you play super competitive comps at the end of the day we all play for fun and if you don't we all know what those sort of gamers are ... Nids will always be fun fun fun . If you get first turn put 24 shots in the face of their warlord and smile as you get first blood and slay the warlord. Then brace for the pain if they last the turn you will win the game . It works for me. Lol
Post-Tournament Analysis and Results coming up later.
aceface wrote: Always Nids . Yer you will get mismatches and GK's are about the worst for a list like yours . But you will also table a lot of army's with that list and . The main thing is it does not matter if you play friendly games or you play super competitive comps at the end of the day we all play for fun and if you don't we all know what those sort of gamers are ... Nids will always be fun fun fun . If you get first turn put 24 shots in the face of their warlord and smile as you get first blood and slay the warlord. Then brace for the pain if they last the turn you will win the game . It works for me. Lol
Actually, GK's are no longer the feared matchup as they once were back in 5th. Tyranids actually match up alright against the knights nowadays. So far in the 6-7 games I've had against the knights with my tyranids, I've only lost once with them (against Blackmoor in a game that I could have won).
But yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with my bugs.
Blackmoor wrote: I don't mean to de-rail the thread, but I posted on my blog my anti-flyer strategy for my grey knights at adepticon.
You can find it on my blog (the link is in my sig below)
No prob. And thanks for taking the time to write up your tactica. I think it will be useful to a lot of people.
You don't necessarily have to have a lot of anti-air guns to deal with flyer-heavy armies. There are many other ways to deal with flyer armies. Blackmoor's article is an excellent tactica on some of the ways you can deal with flyer armies for players using the grey knights.
This tournament analysis is more focused on my experiences rather than a review of the actual venue itself. I'm sure there are already enough reviews about the venue, so the only thing I have to say about that is that I will definitely be back next year.
So as we all know, there were a few Firsts in this tournament. It was the First major tournament in the US with Forgeworld allowed. It was the First major tournament with a women as the winner. This was the First time for me going to the Bay Area Open GT. This was the First time I brought tyranids to a major competition. I had high hopes going into the tournament. I actually believed that tyranids can win a major tournament (still do). Unfortunately, my dream came crashing down in just my very First game. What should have been a very winnable game for me became instead a disaster to my hopes and dreams. In what I can only describe as an upset, my first round opponent played well and I made a mistake that, along with a few dice rolls that didn't go my way, cost me the game. From then on, I have had to adjust my expectations. The tournament championship was already out of reach so I was forced to aim a little lower. But with the amount of fierce competition in this tournament, I was happy to go for the title of Best Tyranid player. I knew it would be no easy feat considering I was already starting behind most of the other bug players (who were 1-0 at the time), but if I played well and didn't lose any more games, I knew I had a chance to do so. My opponent would go on to a respectable 4-3 record.
Game #2 was against a dangerous IG foe. Fortunately for me, luck was on my side this game as I turned what should have been a close game into a route. My opponent took it pretty well, but I could tell he was as deflated this game as I was in my first game. There is that feeling of helplessness when the dice just doesn't go your way.
Game #3 was a game I was very much looking forwards to. I got to play against whigwam and his very brutal daemons. Fortunately, I've had practice against his army while he didn't have any practice against my army. I think my experience was the difference here as I knew exactly what to do against his daemons whereas he was unsure what to do against my bugs. Despite the stumble on the part of my opponent, he actually ended up doing great in the tournament. He would go on to win the rest of his games for an excellent 5-2 record, ending up 19th overall and winning Best Daemon player as well.
Game #4 was just a mismatch for my opponent. His army really wasn't geared towards fighting my bugs and it showed. But I've got say, my opponent here was one of the nicest opponents I have played against.
Then it's on to Day #2 for some more tough competition. Little did I know that I would end up playing against 3 grey knight players!
My first opponent for the day - my Game #5 - I knew was going to be a challenge to play against. He brought dual GK stormravens which are actually very good against nids due to their Mindstrike missiles. I was fortunate to get Iron Arm on both of my flyrants. This was a difference-maker and I was ahead for practically the entire game. However, my opponent played well enough to eke out the Draw (thanks to a mistake on my part). After this game, I was sure that I would be out of the running for Best Tyranids at 3-1-1. BTW, my opponent, Ben, would end the tournament 32nd out of 144 with a very respectable 4-2-1 record.
In Game #6, I knew it was going to be another tough game. I've played against Blackmoor before and he beat me in our first game. I knew that going into the game, it would be much better to try to avoid his deathstar this time around and go after his support units instead. My strategy worked out great as I was ahead for most of the game. This was also the only game where my tyranids went first. Combined that with picking the right sides and I had a big advantage from the get-go that my opponent just could not overcome (he might have, but the game ended naturally before he could get a chance). Day #2 was just not his day, losing tight, close games to both me and the eventual winner of the BAO, Liz Foster.
Finally, I would end the tournament in the same way I started the tournament - by playing against another of my mates from my LGS. Game #7 was another game that had me slightly concerned. However, any concern of mine was gone with my first kill and I knew that this game was mine for the taking. My opponent, Bobby, actually did much better than even he had expected. He actually came into the tournament with the expectation that he his army would get crushed in tournament play. He would leave with a 4-3 record and some respect for his unorthodox paladin grey knights.
So when it came down to the tournament results, I was listening only half-heartedly. Kingsley from my LGS won the award for Best Space Marines, going 5-2 and ending the day in 26th place. Janthkin also did very well, going 5-2 as well for 25th. SabrX missed out by just a few points for Best Tau player, ending his run at 5-2 as well for 23rd place. Lastly, Grey Therion (Bobby) finished in the Top 50 as well with his Draigowing grey knights. I only lost 1 game the entire tournament and ended up with an excellent 5-1-1 record. Despite my record, however, I was almost sure that there would be a bug player who finished 6-1. Then when Reece announced the winner for Best Tyranids, he started by saying, " And the winner for Best Tyranids goes to my arch-rival..." Right there, a smile crossed my face as I already knew what the result would be - I had won the award for Best Tyranid. I also ended up 9th out of 144 players. Well, it isn't the Top 5, but I can't really complain. I am more than content with my finish.
Thank you all for your journey along with me in such an incredible experience. And come next year, I'm not settling for another Top 10 performance. I aim to win it all. See you all next year!
So just out of curiosity there’s always a lot of back and forth about Forgeworld units in tournaments, and I might of missed a one but I don’t think I noticed any of your opponents fielding any, but did you feel any difference in the results because of it? I figure most of the people there would be fine with it since it was clearly stated that Forgeworld units where allowed but love to hear what some of the opinions where after the tournament. Were some units over powered, some people spammed certain units, or did they just bring more diversity to the armies their but still kept things relatively even so to speak.
Julnlecs wrote:On your game 5, only scoring and denial units can score linebreaker which the stormraven is none of those so you should have won the game.
The Stormraven is scoring in this scenario thanks to The Scouring. Remember that Grey Knight Stormravens are Fast Attack...
whoadirty wrote: Solid week with all these bat reps - thanks jy2!
Is there a story behind your objectives?
How many Termagants do you carry around for those two Tervigons?
No story, really. I just like the turtles.
I carry around 60 gants, though I rarely ever need that many. That's because gants get killed and you can recycle them. My general rule of thumb is that you need about 20 gants per tervigon, so for 2, you need about 40. I've only ever got up to 60 once, and that when I ran 3 tervigons. As for 2, probably the most I've ever used was about 50.
Great battle reports, lucid detail and amazing recall with no notes being taken! Like someone said, it's almost like being there.
Your nids have inspired me to start a Mechanicus counts-as nid army with Imperial Knights standing in for TMC!
Flyrants: Jet-Pack constructs
Tervigons and Gaunts: Skitarii Battle-Factorum and Skitarri Hordes
etc.
What are your opinions on Tyrannofexes and Dakkafexes in pods?
Thanks. The pictures help a lot. You could say that they are my notes and I mark down how many dies with my dice.
It'll be pretty cool to see your Mechanicus count-as army. You should post it on dakka if you get the chance. I know Hulksmash had a Mechanicus count-as Daemon army back in 5th, using land speeders as Tzeentch Heralds on chariots. It was pretty cool looking.
I used to use the tyrannofex. Now I think he is a waste of space (sorry t-fex!). Dakkafex, however, is still a very viable unit. Dakkafexes in pods work really well with dual-flyrants and the Doom to put a lot of pressure on the opponent. And while you're at it, might as well throw in a unit of Ymgarls to make his day brighter.
HiveFleet wrote: Excellent report. Congrats on your placement! Look forward to seeing what you can come up with next!
Blackmoor wrote: I was thinking about Dreadknights instead of Dreadnaughts, but your game #7 kind of turned me off of them.
Well that, and their price, and dreadnaughts psychic defense.
I wouldn't dismiss them yet. My opponent just happened to roll poorly with them.
However, the DK's do have a weakness and that is they can be tarpitted by the gribblies.
I would consider a mix of 2 psyflemans + 1 DK if you've got the spare points. Now with the new daemons, your DK (and your dreads) can insta-gib them with zest.
Panzer1944 wrote: Great reports and tournament rundown. Congrats on the top 10 finish even if it was short of your goal. Looking forward as always to your next battle.
Thanks!
SabrX wrote: Congrats winning game #7. Small elite armies have it tough against your Nids.
Also, nice Post-Game/Tournament Analysis. Wow, last three opponents all being against GK armies? Crazy match ups!
Congrats placing 9ths and best Nid player. Awesome battle reports and good luck with the new Daemons.
Yeah, for them, probably my gants are a bigger headache than my big guys. They can usually take on the monsters, but they will get bogged down by the throw-away units. That's how I deal with enemy deathstars. What people need to realize is that 40k is almost a game of time management. Every turn you can make an enemy unit lose a turn of Movement is a turn that you am winning. You don't necessary have to kill your opponent. You just have to prevent/delay his attempt to reach the objectives (my strategy of Positional Dominance). In this regards, an army with numbers has the advantage against a "slow" army without.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting to play 3 GK armies in a row. I guess that goes to show that GK's are not the feared enemy that they once were under 5th Ed.
And congrats to you as well for placing 23rd(?) and almost taking best Tau. You were so close.....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Panzer1944 wrote: So just out of curiosity there’s always a lot of back and forth about Forgeworld units in tournaments, and I might of missed a one but I don’t think I noticed any of your opponents fielding any, but did you feel any difference in the results because of it? I figure most of the people there would be fine with it since it was clearly stated that Forgeworld units where allowed but love to hear what some of the opinions where after the tournament. Were some units over powered, some people spammed certain units, or did they just bring more diversity to the armies their but still kept things relatively even so to speak.
Yeah, I didn't play against any Forgeworld, which was kind of a shame. I did want to play against them.
However, my philosophy on FW remains the same after the tournament as they were before the tournament, and that is this.....bring it on! My TAC armies should be able to handle Forgeworld or any other TAC armies (unless they tailor against my bugs). So I don't care if you bring Forgeworld or a bunch of grots....I just say, bring it on.
In terms of the tournament, yeah, I think FW had somewhat of an effect. People still brought flyers, but the Necron Airforce was quiet for the most part. I think it kept the extreme necron armies away and forced people to bring a more rounded army...which is actually a good thing!
Julnlecs wrote: On your game 5, only scoring and denial units can score linebreaker which the stormraven is none of those so you should have won the game.
SabrX wrote: Congrats winning game #7. Small elite armies have it tough against your Nids.
Also, nice Post-Game/Tournament Analysis. Wow, last three opponents all being against GK armies? Crazy match ups!
Congrats placing 9ths and best Nid player. Awesome battle reports and good luck with the new Daemons.
Yeah, for them, probably my gants are a bigger headache than my big guys. They can usually take on the monsters, but they will get bogged down by the throw-away units. That's how I deal with enemy deathstars. What people need to realize is that 40k is almost a game of time management. Every turn you can make an enemy unit lose a turn of Movement is a turn that you am winning. You don't necessary have to kill your opponent. You just have to prevent/delay his attempt to reach the objectives (my strategy of Positional Dominance). In this regards, an army with numbers has the advantage against a "slow" army without.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting to play 3 GK armies in a row. I guess that goes to show that GK's are not the feared enemy that they once were under 5th Ed.
And congrats to you as well for placing 23rd(?) and almost taking best Tau. You were so close.....
Yes, deathstars have a a few big weaknesses and that is a major one. When I play my eldar vs draigowing I just fly my jetbikes in front of them and they can't really do anything about it.
And SaberX, I am sorry now I quit my last game. I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins, but it was an unpleasant game and so I gave up. Now I am really upset, because the person who should have won didn't, and my opponent who did not earn it did.
Blackmoor wrote: I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins
Taudar with Tau being Primary? I run a cheap Shaso with 2+ armour and 2 shield drones with a fortune farseer and 9 man Harlie squad to try to counter death stars. Runs around460-560 points or so. Guessing he didn't have any harlies? What was he running?
Haven't figured out a good counter for Vendetta or Scyth spam, (Darth Diggler suggested going Eldar as primary) though the rumors about broadsides look to address that.
SabrX wrote: Congrats winning game #7. Small elite armies have it tough against your Nids.
Also, nice Post-Game/Tournament Analysis. Wow, last three opponents all being against GK armies? Crazy match ups!
Congrats placing 9ths and best Nid player. Awesome battle reports and good luck with the new Daemons.
Yeah, for them, probably my gants are a bigger headache than my big guys. They can usually take on the monsters, but they will get bogged down by the throw-away units. That's how I deal with enemy deathstars. What people need to realize is that 40k is almost a game of time management. Every turn you can make an enemy unit lose a turn of Movement is a turn that you am winning. You don't necessary have to kill your opponent. You just have to prevent/delay his attempt to reach the objectives (my strategy of Positional Dominance). In this regards, an army with numbers has the advantage against a "slow" army without.
Yeah, I wasn't expecting to play 3 GK armies in a row. I guess that goes to show that GK's are not the feared enemy that they once were under 5th Ed.
And congrats to you as well for placing 23rd(?) and almost taking best Tau. You were so close.....
Yes, deathstars have a a few big weaknesses and that is a major one. When I play my eldar vs draigowing I just fly my jetbikes in front of them and they can't really do anything about it.
And SaberX, I am sorry now I quit my last game. I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins, but it was an unpleasant game and so I gave up. Now I am really upset, because the person who should have won didn't, and my opponent who did not earn it did.
Whew, now that's out of my system. I don't really care about any fancy smansy award or $50 gift voucher from frontline gaming. I'll still purchase from them regardless. They really do offer great discounts.
I'm just glad you came out and told me the truth. I feel vindicated after learning my army was truly the best Tau build at the tournament. Thanks for telling me!
After talking to you at the tournament, it sounded like you had a rough time in your matches. When I experience a losing streak (which I seldom do against Jy2) or the dice gods have forsaken me (happens quite a lot), I always remind myself it's just a game and the point of the game is to have fun. I've talked to a couple of players who've conceded. Their reason is because they knew they weren't having fun and if the game stretched on, their experience will grow worst. Not only will it affect them, but it will also affect their opponents. It's not fun playing against an opponent who is sour and hard to deal with over multiple turns. It's OK to concede if you aren't having fun.
Fikol wrote: I do enjoy your reports, they are both fun and informative.
I must admit I was spot on with my judgement of you ending up top 10
Good prediction. I admit that I was off on my prediction. I was looking for a Top 5 finish and had I won my game #5 (the one where I should have won), I actually had a very good chance to get there. Oh well...next year.
wyomingfox wrote: I suppose we can't bribe you to play test the new Tau coming in April/May
Oh, you betcha. Tau is actually an army I am very interested in. As a matter of fact, if I were to start another army, it would be Tau. SabrX has a sizeable Tau army (with 12 suits and 9 broadsides!) and he said that I could use it anytime. When the new Tau comes out, you bet I'm going to take him up on his offer.
Yes, deathstars have a a few big weaknesses and that is a major one. When I play my eldar vs draigowing I just fly my jetbikes in front of them and they can't really do anything about it.
And SaberX, I am sorry now I quit my last game. I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins, but it was an unpleasant game and so I gave up. Now I am really upset, because the person who should have won didn't, and my opponent who did not earn it did.
Actually, your opponent wasn't the top Tau player and he did not win Best Tau. Even after you conceded, he only ended up 4-2-1. There was another Tau player who also went 5-2 and beat SabrX by ONLY 1 BATTLE POINT!
Blackmoor wrote: I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins
Taudar with Tau being Primary? I run a cheap Shaso with 2+ armour and 2 shield drones with a fortune farseer and 9 man Harlie squad to try to counter death stars. Runs around460-560 points or so. Guessing he didn't have any harlies? What was he running?
Haven't figured out a good counter for Vendetta or Scyth spam, (Darth Diggler suggested going Eldar as primary) though the rumors about broadsides look to address that.
Blackmoor's opponent did run Taudar. His allies included Fuegan on a quad-gun and 1 unit of 3 guardian jetbikes. I believe that was it.
Deathrain suits and broadsides can do ok against flyers. All those twin-linked shots will eventually kill something. However, what you have to watch out for are the ground forces as well. In an army like my necrons, my 12 wraiths with D-lords are probably the higher priority targets than my flyers.
BTW, if I do run Tau with allies, it would be Torks as well. I really like that combo.
After talking to you at the tournament, it sounded like you had a rough time in your matches. When I experience a losing streak (which I seldom do against Jy2) or the dice gods have forsaken me (happens quite a lot),....
Thanks for a thouroughly enjoyable thread and read, pics, analysis, effort and commentary were brilliant.
Hope you had a good time at the tourney
How did you find the Biovores performed overall?
I personnally like them as units.
Also how did the 2 Flyrants do overall in your opinon?
Did they stand up against the other flyers / were worth their points costs?
BTW is there somewhere to view the overall standings and results?
Ok Manna, not all of us visit every subforum - thanks for the link but no need to "perhaps" and "enormous" it.....as I said, some of us view certain subforums and some others view others.
wyomingfox wrote: I suppose we can't bribe you to play test the new Tau coming in April/May
Oh, you betcha. Tau is actually an army I am very interested in. As a matter of fact, if I were to start another army, it would be Tau. SabrX has a sizeable Tau army (with 12 suits and 9 broadsides!) and he said that I could use it anytime. When the new Tau comes out, you bet I'm going to take him up on his offer.
I actually have 17 Crisis Suits, which can easily be converted to Broadsides just by switching weapons. I also have 2 actual Broadside models. Feel free to borrow my models once the new codex comes out.
Yes, deathstars have a a few big weaknesses and that is a major one. When I play my eldar vs draigowing I just fly my jetbikes in front of them and they can't really do anything about it.
And SaberX, I am sorry now I quit my last game. I was playing the top Tau player and I could not take it anymore and so I gave the game to him. I was going to win that game easily because I was going to kill his troops (he only had 3x6 Fire Warriors+3 Eldar jetbikes) and he had no answer for paladins, but it was an unpleasant game and so I gave up. Now I am really upset, because the person who should have won didn't, and my opponent who did not earn it did.
Actually, your opponent wasn't the top Tau player and he did not win Best Tau. Even after you conceded, he only ended up 4-2-1. There was another Tau player who also went 5-2 and beat SabrX by ONLY 1 BATTLE POINT!
Aww shucks. Now I'm curious what the other Tau player fielded.
I could have actually scored more points in my last game, but my opponent wanted to end it 20mins early.
After talking to you at the tournament, it sounded like you had a rough time in your matches. When I experience a losing streak (which I seldom do against Jy2) or the dice gods have forsaken me (happens quite a lot),....
Ahem....this caught my attention.
"seldom"?
woops, brain fart. Sleep deprivation catching up to me. I meant to say often. I often do have losing streaks against you Jy2.
Ratius wrote: Ok Manna, not all of us visit every subforum - thanks for the link but no need to "perhaps" and "enormous" it.....as I said, some of us view certain subforums and some others view others.
Thank you for the link anyway
sorry, I'm being an overly defensive boozehound
#hugs
Sorry if I wasn't as friendly as I could have been. Slainte! (from an O'Brien on my mother's side)
Sorry for the little bit of offtopic but im just amazed about power of the internet. Here I sit in Central Europe and I can share experience and have lots of info almost life across the globe.... :-) beautilful to be able to "participate" somehow. Thx! :-)
Dakka has been around for nearly a decade, and so has the internet.
Maybe not... in Poland?
I remember coming here for my international Warhammer fix when I was a wee lad of thirteen, and now back in the game fourteen years later, it was my first port of call!
First off: Congrats JY2 on the solid outing. I seriously miss my nid army and will eventually pick them up again.
Unrelated to your actual game:
How did two flyrants get downed by one shooting attack? Fliers cant be hit by tesla or anything for that matter that auto hits.
Tomb King wrote: Unrelated to your actual game:
How did two flyrants get downed by one shooting attack? Fliers cant be hit by tesla or anything for that matter that auto hits.
Ratius wrote: Thanks for a thouroughly enjoyable thread and read, pics, analysis, effort and commentary were brilliant.
Hope you had a good time at the tourney
How did you find the Biovores performed overall?
I personnally like them as units.
Also how did the 2 Flyrants do overall in your opinon?
Did they stand up against the other flyers / were worth their points costs?
BTW is there somewhere to view the overall standings and results?
Yeah, I had a great time at the tourney. Great games all against great guys. There wasn't any bad games or real arguments. You can't really ask for much more, especially in a 7-game series and when you are playing at the upper tables.
Biovores did well. There were more games when they did well than when they did poorly (which was mainly only Game #1). Overall, they are worth it and consistently produce.
Flyrants are boss. After going dual flyrants, I can't go back to Swarmlord+flyrant. Mobility is so crucial in this game. Moreover, the flyrants are my main source of anti-air. I would not have been able to do as well as I did if not for my flyrants.
As Mannahnim already pointed out the BAO Results link, I won't link it again.
I actually have 17 Crisis Suits, which can easily be converted to Broadsides just by switching weapons. I also have 2 actual Broadside models. Feel free to borrow my models once the new codex comes out.
Cool. I'm excited about their upcoming codex. After giving your army a go, I may just start another army if I like them.
After talking to you at the tournament, it sounded like you had a rough time in your matches. When I experience a losing streak (which I seldom do against Jy2) or the dice gods have forsaken me (happens quite a lot),....
Ahem....this caught my attention.
"seldom"?
woops, brain fart. Sleep deprivation catching up to me. I meant to say often. I often do have losing streaks against you Jy2.
Lol. I can do math....as long as it doesn't go pass my 10 fingers.
Just Dave wrote: Great reports and congratulations on your results and placing, Jy2.
The entire thread was a pleasure to read, thanks for taking the time to do it. Congrats.
My pleasure and don't worry, you'll see more.
The next big GT you'll probably see me in (and hence, my battle reports) is when I defend my title at the Golden Throne GT.
Fikol wrote: Sorry for the little bit of offtopic but im just amazed about power of the internet. Here I sit in Central Europe and I can share experience and have lots of info almost life across the globe.... :-) beautilful to be able to "participate" somehow. Thx! :-)
Yeah, it's really cool. Now we aren't stuck in our own little world anymore. 40K is international!
Tomb King wrote: First off: Congrats JY2 on the solid outing. I seriously miss my nid army and will eventually pick them up again. Very well done.
Unrelated to your actual game:
How did two flyrants get downed by one shooting attack? Fliers cant be hit by tesla or anything for that matter that auto hits.
Thanks! And congrats to you at the Indy Open as well.
Nids are pretty fun in 6th, especially now that they are winning again. The only downside is that the variety in competitive tyranid builds have decreased. Gone now in competitive play are the genestealer-rush nids and the all-reserves tyranids (this one I miss in particular).
I was slightly confused by your 2nd question, as it didn't happen in any of my games, but I guess Rigeld2 clarified it for us.
If not for that 1 silly mistake in my game #5 (not checking for Linebreaker for the win instead of the draw), I would have ended up 3rd overall. Doh!!!!
If not for that 1 silly mistake in my game #5 (not checking for Linebreaker for the win instead of the draw), I would have ended up 3rd overall. Doh!!!!
On top of that if you had sorted out your first game, what would have happened there?
If not for that 1 silly mistake in my game #5 (not checking for Linebreaker for the win instead of the draw), I would have ended up 3rd overall. Doh!!!!
On top of that if you had sorted out your first game, what would have happened there?
That would be a little harder to say. Had I won my first game, probably all my opponents would have been different then.
I say the nid list. Those flyrants are just so hard to deal with unless they have DE kabalites with splinter racks. Also the tervigons spawning all of those gants (hopefully) will be pretty essential.
BaconUprising wrote: I say the nid list. Those flyrants are just so hard to deal with unless they have DE kabalites with splinter racks. Also the tervigons spawning all of those gants (hopefully) will be pretty essential.
You're a little late... on the plus side you have lots of cool battle reports to read!
Plus they will be more of a wild card im sure.
)
He also brought the Forgeworld Malanthrope.
In addition, I cant stand when the odds are not necessarily going against the norm but when they go flat out crazy it kind of takes things away from the game.
. Nothing I did there to make that happen. Just the dice happened to agree with me staying there. 
"watch yo mouth", out of his paladins. His interceptors will probably be the deciding factor for him because he needs their shots to ground his tyrants so he can shoot them with the paladins.
