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Got in a game yesterday against the Tervigon spam list that scares me on a fundamental level for some reason. I decided to try them out with my tournament army from Battleforge Games in Austin, TX that went 3-0 and placed 7th out of 36 on Saturday. Army lists and photos are below, as well as some analysis. Enjoy!

Void Eagles (2000 points Codex SM)
Librarian with Null Zone, Avenger, Epistolary

10 Marines, Lascannon, Plasma Rifle, Sergeant with Powerfist, Razorback with Las/Twin-Plas

10 Marines, Lascannon, Plasma Rifle, Sergeant with Powerweapon, Razorback with Las/Twin-Plas

10 Marines, Missile Launcher, Plasma Rifle, Sergeant with Powerfist, Razorback with Las/Twin-Plas

10 Marines, Missile Launcher, Plasma Rifle, Sergeant with Powerweapon, Razorback with Las/Twin-Plas

Predator with Autocannon, Las sponsons

Vindicator

Thunderfire Cannon

3 Attack Bikes with Heavy Bolters

3 Attack Bikes with Multi-Meltas

Landspeeder Typhoon

Hive Fleet "Skittles" (2000 points of the new Tyranids)

HQ Tervigon

3x 23 Termagaunts with Fleshborers

3x Tervigons

1 unit of 3 Biovores

1 unit of 3 Hiveguard

1 unit of 9 Winged Warriors with Deathspitters, Scything Talons

1 Trygon Prime

Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Pitched Battle

Tyranids win the roll to go first and deploy there objective at the 12 inch mark, almost 1/3 of the way down the board from the Marine left in the pictures. The Marine objective goes in the far left corner, behind a nice set of area ruins. The Marines decide to refuse the flank, forcing the Tyranids to close on them and keeping the Shrikes and Hive Guard out of effective shooting for about two turns. The Tyranids hold the Trygon and one Termagaunt brood in reserves. All Tac squads combat squad down, putting heavy weapons and plasma in the shooting squads in the ruins and the Sarge in the Razorbacks.

Tyranid Turn 1
The Tyranids advance. All four of the Tervigons spawn, with the HQ Tervigon exhausting himself. The Biovores fire into the densly packed Marine firebase, but do no damage. Everything else runs to close the gap. The leading gaunt squads get FNP from the Terivgons.

Marine Turn 1
The majority of the army stays static to maximize firepower. The MM bikes cruise out 12 to line up shots on the HQ Tervigon and the Vindicator trundles forward 6 to be able to at least pie plate some gaunts. The entire army fires on the two Tervigons directly across from it and succeeds in killing both of them!! Several gaunts fall from the 3d6 hits, but not nearly enough due to poor rolling. The Vindicator and the Thunderfire pick off some of the screening gaunts from one of the big broods.

Tyranid Turn 2
Both the Termagaunt brood and the Trygon arrive from reserves. The new Termagaunts walk on from the board edge near the biovores and the Trygon pops in right next to the Marine firebase, eyeing the juicy Thunderfire cannon. A good use of Dominion brings everything except one of the spawned Termagaunt broods into synapse, and those gaunts promptly pass the LD5 instinctive behavior check. Catalyst goes off on the Shrikes, but is negated by the Libby for the gaunt screen. Hiveguard fall about 2 inches short of range on the Libby's razorback. Everything else runs. Biovores plaster the Marine fire base, pinning one of the squads.

Marine Turn 2
Just a little movement, mostly shifting the fast pieces and right to shooting. The MM bikes whiff on the Trygon, but the beast falls to the combined weight of a nearby Razorback and the unpinned combat squads. The Predator picks off a Shrike with a lascannon and puts another wound on the squad with his autocannon. The Thunderfire wipes out the remainder of a brood of 23 and the heavy bolter ABs start picking off another one.

Tyranid Turn 3
Both Tervigons close on to the center, the Shrikes hold about 15 inches from the Predator and put a wound on the HB bikes. The rest of the horde surges forward and the Biovores plaster the firebase again, pinning a squad. Hiveguard wreck the librarian's Razorback.

Marine Turn 3
Predator picks off another Shrike. Shooting from the firebase and the Typhoon combine to put 4 wounds on a Tervigon. Razorbacks boost forward to start threading a path through the gaunt screen towards the Nid objective. The far left Razorback has a clear path to the objective with only biovores blocking him. Librarian and his squad walk forward as a screen and Avenger/rapid fire the leading gaunt squad, killing it off but are now exposed to the last 23 gaunt brood.

Tyranid Turn 4
The Termagaunt brood that walked on from reserves assaults the MM bikes, but the move takes them out 6 from the nearest Tervigon causing them to loss their buffs. Ouch! Fleshborers light up the Librarians squad, putting a wound on him and killing all but one bolter marine. He uses combat tactics to fall back to the safety of the fire base. The Hiveguard kill the Predator. Shrikes lurk at range, trading shots with the HB bikes.

Marine Turn 4
Two combat squads disembark and join the fight with the MB bikes in the center, along with the Librarian helping out too. Shooting fails to kill the wounded Tervigon. Thunderfire and Vindicator continue to blast away gaunts as quickly as humanely possible.

Tyranid Turn 5
The wounded Tervigon tries Catalyst and rolls boxcars, dropping him to 1 wound. The Shrikes assault and kill the last HB bike. The 4th Tervigon perils as well, but chases the Razorbacks making for the Tyranid objective and successfully immobilizes one in assault. Lots of gaunts ping off the other two Razorbacks headed that way. Furious Charging gaunts kill off the Librarian, but the Sergeant's powerfist dispatches the badly wounded Tervigon and the resulting psychic spasms kills off all the remaining Termagaunts. The MM attack bikes were destroyed by the Tervigon at I1 as well. Biovores shoot the Marine firebase for the 5th turn in a row.

Marine Turn 5
The combat squads in the firebase shift into screening lines to prevent the Shrikes from landing inside 3 inches and contesting. A good tank shock pushes the closest Termagaunt brood out of 3 inches of the Tyranid objective. Shooting kills off some more gaunts and another shrike, while a random scatter by the Vindicator puts the first wound on the Hive Guard.

If the game ends, the Marines win 2-0. I pick up the dice and roll...a 5! Turn six it is.

Tyranid Turn 6
The Shrikes and some gaunts come knocking on the fire bases door. The Shrikes assault a combat squad and massacre move into the ruins to within 3 of the objective. The gaunts cause some casualties on another combat squad, but leader ship is passed. The biovores do not have a good target that doesn't expose gaunts to the blast as well and wait patiently.

Marine Turn 6
In a brain fart moment, the last combat squad by the Tyranid objective trundles out of their Razorback to rapid fire some gaunts and try to push them out of three inches. The Thunderfire kills the last few gaunts near the Marine objectives and the Shrikes go to ground for a 2+ cover save in the bolstered ruins. A lot of dice rolls later, and there are still 3 Shrikes standing.

If the game ends, its a tie! The Tyranid player rolls and...a 6! Turn seven, here we come.

Tyranid Turn 7
The last Tervigon and the Gaunts kill the combat squad and one of the Razorbacks, but fail to kill the last Razorback instead leaving it immobilized and weaponless but within 3 of the Nid objective and still technically alive. The Shrikes stand up, and promptly go to ground voluntarily with my next shooting phase lurking.

Marine Turn 7
There is nothing I can do to claim the Tyranid objective. It all comes down to killing the shrikes. After a bunch of plasma and lascannons bounce off the 2+ cover save, with some incidental bolters sprinkling a few wounds, the Thunderfire comes through and puts an absurd amount (15!!) of wounds on the Shrikes using airburst mode which finally succeeds in killing them off. Marines walk away 1-0 victors.

Some quick learning points:
+Tervigons rock en masse. The 3d6 hits on their death really only results in 5 to 6 wounds per brood on average and is totally acceptable when you have over 150 gaunts appearing during the course of the game.
+Shrikes with deathspitters are brutual. ST 5 shooting with 3 shoots per Warrior plus the poison 4+ off the toxin sacs is a great combination.

I think the way to fight this kind of army is to stretch the fight vertically with your range advantages. You need to keep them outside of 30" (the effective range on the Hiveguard) as long as possible and minimize the return fire. It also helps to spread the objectives out as much as possible as the Tyranid player can't keep a brood back there without leaving a Tervigon to babysit as well and this helps keep part of his numbers out of the fight. Clumping objectives plays into the Tyranid hand because it allows him to surge forward with his counter-attacking, furious charging, poisoned muldoons. Killing the Tervigons helps, but you still need the punch to actually pull the Gaunts off the board and that gets tough after awhile.

Sweet battle!
Like the Tergivon conversion, kinda like what I was thinking, but with more sac-like things.

Thanks. One of our local players started the trend and my opponent is one of the guys who copied the look. You can almost make the whole thing out of a single Carnifex box. All you need otherwise is a single set of scything talons.

Thanks for the report - nice!

Quick question - did the Tyranids eat most of the terrain pre-game?

Alpharius wrote:Thanks for the report - nice!

Quick question - did the Tyranids eat most of the terrain pre-game?

I noticed that too. You guys need to have a terrain-making night for the FLGS. You'll learn, just try and play that sparse a setup against bladestorming Dire Avengers. You'll learn...

Back on topic, if you really want to have some sort of bumps to represent gaunts ready to spawn, use some spare torso fronts from the Raveners. They come with way more than they need to represent all of the weapon options.

Alpharius wrote:Thanks for the report - nice!

Quick question - did the Tyranids eat most of the terrain pre-game?

Almost. There is plenty of more terrain for the desert board, but both of us got a little tired of fighting the perpetual "Battle for Orc Village" and reduced it a little. It is important to point out that we played "connect the dots" with both of the ruined areas for 4+ cover to anything inside and that the little sponge looking scrubs throughout the center also provided 4+ cover.

Good battle-- sounds like the Thunderfire Cannon really came through for you! What was the total killcount on that gun?

Nice report, very interesting, thanks for posting.

Fetterkey wrote:Good battle-- sounds like the Thunderfire Cannon really came through for you! What was the total killcount on that gun?

Didn't keep a round by round total, but it was easily 45+ gaunts and the two and 1/3 shrikes at the end. Airburst mood is insanely good against gaunts (Wounds on 2s, AP negates chitin, no cover saves) and the real weakness it can exploit against this type of Tyranids is the fact that the broods are so large, all but the most radical scatters will still land on something squishy.

AAAAH killing waves of aliens is so satisfying! one question though, I didn't know that you could have 10 marines in razorbacks? I thought they could only hold 6 marines? or is it because of the plasma guns?

His marines combat squadded up.

Holy terrain batman, that must have been one shooting field. Reminds me of that movie about the battle for Roks Drift.

=I= White-Wolf wrote:AAAAH killing waves of aliens is so satisfying! one question though, I didn't know that you could have 10 marines in razorbacks? I thought they could only hold 6 marines? or is it because of the plasma guns?

I grappled got it correct. Buy the squad as 10 for full options, then combat squad down to put half of them in the Razorback.

Good report.

Good report. i have recently played nids and my biggest tauget against nids now are devil gaunts. a squad of 20 are really good killers, pumping out 60 shots if within range. most of the time i see them pop out on a flank courtesy of a annoying hive tryant, then procede to obliterate low model units or pin bigger units.

Good report; good use of combat tactics as well!

great report, way to rock those nidz!

Awesome report! I really enjoyed reading it.

G

good battle report. i agree with the above statements... more terrain for the table and more scrotom for the tervigons!

Nice report. I liked how you put the pictures in their own section. It keeps the narrative flowing. You might want to mention to your opponent that toxin sacs only work on close combat attacks, though.