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Thank you for another great battle report!

I thought that the Tyranids are going to win this one for sure but you shut down the Troop spawning factories and the Genestealers in a direct head to head confrontation.

Excellent strategic decision to push forward on turns 1 and 2. You punished the Tyranids for going all in reserve beautifully! With only 2 turns of actual gameplay with his whole army the nids player could only do so much.

I feel that having all of those rhinos to block the Tyranids advance was crucial and it makes me wonder if pure Draigowing Paladin lists don't gimp themselves too much by not having little AV11 fortresses zipping around the battlefield!?

Good report, as always !

Burned stealers made the win.

Regarding nids, I tend to think that the best place for tyranofexes ends up being in the front line; maybe keeping 2 to deal with the rear rhino was a bit excessive (I use a tyrant with the preferred ennemy bubble; not sure this works well with SwarmLord) ?

Clever use of most units by both players; the swarmlord-tyrant guard placement is brilliant to avoid this crowe nuisance...

Congratulation jy2! You got a huge break towards the end when cleansing flame went off against the Genestealers. I'm surprised Crowe failed all his saves and died to Swarm Lord. Well played Janthkin.

Thanks for sharing!

darkcloud92 wrote:Wow great report! it looked like it could go either way right up till the last turn or so. To bad crowe had to die :/

My opponent played it well. His strategy of killing Crowe without the Swarmlord getting into base caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting that. Even I can learn a thing or two.

Benn Bloodmane wrote:Great job annihilating the bugs I like being proven wrong. That SitW can really be a pain when getting those powers off at crucial moments.

Definitely a good fight.

Tell me about it. The first time I played against Janthkin, I only got off 1 psychic power out of about 10, and that was a LD10 Fortitude attempt. LD9 only has a 37.5% chance of successfully using a psychic power under Shadows. Statistically, I was rolling well below the norm when in Shadows range. But the one time I did get it off was huge.

Red Corsair wrote:I have to say those T-fexes were disappointing as I find they usually are... I love tht creature but he never really has much of an impact on the game it seems like...

I agree, which is why I never take more than 1 t-fex. I myself am a hive guard man.

Red Corsair wrote:I can't wait to see you take on those Bjorn wolves next, I love those old men.... Wait that sounded wrong ; )

Lol. It should be a good one. I just hope my work doesn't prevent me from "post-poning" the game again.

Andilus Greatsword wrote:
...oh wow. I was going to ask this too, and now I'm really glad to find this out. I play Nids, and I'm always looking for another way to keep my Tyrant alive a little longer.

It's an easy mistake to make. Even I played it wrong initially until Janthkin pointed it out to me in one of my games (I believe it's in one of my tyranid battle reports here on dakkadakka).

Grey Therion wrote:Thank you for another great battle report!

I thought that the Tyranids are going to win this one for sure but you shut down the Troop spawning factories and the Genestealers in a direct head to head confrontation.

Excellent strategic decision to push forward on turns 1 and 2. You punished the Tyranids for going all in reserve beautifully! With only 2 turns of actual gameplay with his whole army the nids player could only do so much.

I feel that having all of those rhinos to block the Tyranids advance was crucial and it makes me wonder if pure Draigowing Paladin lists don't gimp themselves too much by not having little AV11 fortresses zipping around the battlefield!?

I admit that the dice gods were on my side this game. While I was due for passing one of my psychic tests under Shadows (I was rolling way below norm in my last few games), Janthkin failing so many saves for his tervigons was just due to subpar rolling on his part.

In my experience, the more aggressive army tends to have the advantage especially in an objectives-game (as long as his list is balanced with enough scoring units). The exception is in Annihilation missions where static armies don't have to move. One of the things people often overlook is positioning and the Movement Phase. If you can achieve "Positional Superiority", then you have the advantage. By reaching the objective first, I just needed to hold it, which is a lot easier to do than for my opponent to try to get me off of it.

Regarding the "2 turns of actual gameplay", I felt that wasn't a mistake by my opponent. Quite the opposite, I felt it was a good play by him considering the mission objective. He didn't need to wipe me out or try to reach my deployment zone. He just needed to have his scoring units survive long enough to claim the middle. And against shooty armies, the best way to do that is to deny them their shooting phases. As for reaching the objective, he only needed to move 18" from his deployment edge to claim it (because he only needed to be within 6" to claim the objective). He had plenty of time to do that even while coming in from reserves. At the same time, he is increasing the probability of his scoring units to make it there alive by denying me 2 full turns of shooting. But you are right, I did punish him for coming in from reserves by achieving "positional superiority".

I also took advantage of the tyranid's weak AT. Relying on assault for AT (unless they're trygons) is unreliable at best, especially when you are hitting on 6's and then damaging on 6's. That's 36 attacks just to penetrate 1 35-50pt transport! Foot-lists will always have an inherent disadvantage against mech-armies and that's what I took advantage of.

Arleucs wrote:Good report, as always !

Burned stealers made the win.

Regarding nids, I tend to think that the best place for tyranofexes ends up being in the front line; maybe keeping 2 to deal with the rear rhino was a bit excessive (I use a tyrant with the preferred ennemy bubble; not sure this works well with SwarmLord) ?

Clever use of most units by both players; the swarmlord-tyrant guard placement is brilliant to avoid this crowe nuisance...

I agree about the t-fex. However, in this case, I think he was concerned about them getting force weapon'd to death. Also, considering that he was coming in from reserves, you just can't fit the t-fexes in the front when you only have 6" to come in and need to fit in screening termagants, the shorter-ranged hive guards and tervigons to buff up the rest of your army. Also, you need the tervigons up front so they have less of a distance to travel to the central objective.

Now if he had started them off on the board....

The advantage with the Swarmlord's ability is its 18" reach. This lets his genestealers venture a little further out or to infiltrate and still receive the benefits of Preferred Enemy. Basically, Old Adversary is better in a counter-assault tyranid build. The Swarmlord let's you play your nids a little more aggressively as you can venture out a little further.

SabrX wrote:Congratulation jy2! You got a huge break towards the end when cleansing flame went off against the Genestealers. I'm surprised Crowe failed all his saves and died to Swarm Lord. Well played Janthkin.

Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, if I didn't get off CF, I probably would've lost that combat, though his stealers would've probably been locked in combat with my vendread and perhaps my warding stave purifier. However, I still had the upper hand because he only had 4 troops left - his stealers and 3 squads of termagants, one of which only had 2-models left.

There's no way Crowe would survive the Swarmlord because his bonesabre's make you re-roll successful invuln saves. The bonesabres cancel out Crowe's parrying special ability, thus I had to make 5 successful 4+ saves to survive. Failing even 1 of them means instant death by the bonesabres.

Huh - I should take more low-light pictures of my 'nids; they look much better that way!

Thanks for the write-up, Jim. It was a good game, and you played extremely well, and capitalized on my mistakes. Luck wasn't a huge factor - my Tervigon saves were a little low, but if I wanted them alive, I should have FNP'd them. I just didn't respect the S5 stormbolter fire enough. Lesson learned! (Yes, Cleansing Flame was less likely to go off under Shadows, but I shouldn't have assaulted the Purifiers at all - the hope was to clear the Strike Squad & the rest of those Interceptors, then stay safely locked with the VenDread inside 6" of the objective. I got greedy.)

I thought about deploying the T-fexes at the outset of the game, but facing every gun in your army, even 2+ armor isn't all that reliable.

We'll play again, I'm sure. I think GK may scale up to Ard Boyz level better than 'nids do; we'll have to return to the 1750-2k range, and see what happens. I should also finish my Parasite conversion - "cheap" mobile synapse could be a lifesaver!

Read the title, knew who won already. Purifiers vs. any horde army has a high chance of win for the Grey Knights.

@Janthkin:

Ah, thank you for adding your feedback and insights into the game.

I was a little concerned in this game. That piece of terrain in the center basically neutered my shooting and I knew you would take advantage of it. You really had me thinking this game, which made me take longer than I normally do with my deployment. I'm glad I didn't deploy my dreads in the corner terrains. Though they would have had better shooting arcs, they wouldn't have been there to protect my army as they were meant to be.

I learned from our last game. Split them up and I'm in trouble. Move them as a cohesive whole, with each unit supporting the other, and they're much better....just like tyranids!

GK's definitely scale up very well. However, they are quite formidable at almost any points level. That's because their basic core units are much better than regular MEQ's. Unless you're running Draigowing, the knights can compete at almost any point well and still do well. Even at 1750-2000 pts, I believe my Crowe-purifiers will perform at about the same level as my 2500 Crowe-purifiers. IMO, for the grey knights, there is no sweet spot like there is with nids (with the exception of a paladin build). Every points level is a sweet spot to them. That is one of the reasons why I think a Crowe-Purifier build (heck, the GK codex) is so strong - they can compete with almost any build at any points levels.

KilroyKiljoy wrote:Read the title, knew who won already. Purifiers vs. any horde army has a high chance of win for the Grey Knights.

Not necessarily true. While GK's normally have the advantage against nids, in this battle, my GK build 1) is geared more towards fighting mech than foot lists, 2) have trouble against Shadows and 3) am facing a very good player.

It was actually anybody's game until the pivotal 4th Turn showdown.

jy2 wrote:GK's definitely scale up very well. However, they are quite formidable at almost any points level. That's because their basic core units are much better than regular MEQ's. Unless you're running Draigowing, the knights can compete at almost any point well and still do well. Even at 1750-2000 pts, I believe my Crowe-purifiers will perform at about the same level as my 2500 Crowe-purifiers. IMO, for the grey knights, there is no sweet spot like there is with nids (with the exception of a paladin build). Every points level is a sweet spot to them. That is one of the reasons why I think a Crowe-Purifier build (heck, the GK codex) is so strong - they can compete with almost any build at any points levels.

It's not that I think your army will be any weaker, it's just that mine is proportionately stronger; I don't gain a lot in that last couple hundred points, where you got a couple strike squads in rhinos.

T-fex finally blows up my rhino. 1 purifier die in the explosion. However, I position my guys so that he cannot use his dessicator larvae or cluster spines without the template/blast touching his hive guards as well.

Actually the cluster spine could still ahve hit your purifiers, as the rule book says that templates may not cover friendly models, however blast "templates" are referred to as "blast markers" an entirely different device.

brilliantly played by both.
Have to admit jY2 that your list is the best incarnation i have seen the addition of the strikers with psybolt ammo, gives you the need firesupport to thin out things, but most important the bodies to take on a hit.

Janthkin wrote:It's not that I think your army will be any weaker, it's just that mine is proportionately stronger; I don't gain a lot in that last couple hundred points, where you got a couple strike squads in rhinos.

That's true. Drop 1 t-fex, 2 hive guards, 1-2 ymgarls and a few genestealers/gargoyles and you still have basically your core army. As for me, I'd have to ditch 1 dread, 1 striker squad and probably a couple of guys/upgrades. It'll still be a tough battle between us.

Though the next time we fight, it probably won't be with my purifiers. They're going to be "on vacation" for a little while.

Killbot3.0 wrote:T-fex finally blows up my rhino. 1 purifier die in the explosion. However, I position my guys so that he cannot use his dessicator larvae or cluster spines without the template/blast touching his hive guards as well.

Actually the cluster spine could still ahve hit your purifiers, as the rule book says that templates may not cover friendly models, however blast "templates" are referred to as "blast markers" an entirely different device.

Blast markers can hit your own guys, but that is after scatter. When you place it initially on the target before rolling whether it hits or not, the blast marker cannot touch any of your own units. That's what happened. He couldn't place his cluster spines blast on my purifiers without having it also touch his hive guards.

Valek wrote:brilliantly played by both.
Have to admit jY2 that your list is the best incarnation i have seen the addition of the strikers with psybolt ammo, gives you the need firesupport to thin out things, but most important the bodies to take on a hit.

Yeah, I think it is also an improvement over my previous Crowe-Purifier list. I don't play pure MSU, so the extra bodies do help a lot in giving me some added durability.

Overall, I had a specific strategy in mind, though my execution was far from perfect. I did make a lot of mistakes, but I am lucky that the grey knights are a forgiving codex.