Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Easier said then done. Against wolves or DE the Tyranids are at a disadvantage if they do not go first and even then they need everything with their MC do go right. It's not can the bugs win, but can they win consistently?

 jifel wrote:
Did you consider putting the Tervigons in reserve? I now bring Hive Commander for the sole reason of having the option of Reserves when I see a drop Jaws list like this. Nids have a good match up against almost every army, and probably have one of the fewest amounts of "counter lists" but boy does that list counter us hard.

No, I didn't. I still have some reservations about putting them into reserves. On the turn they come in, they cannot cast their blessings powers, cannot spawn gants and cannot assault. In addition, with the long fangs and depending on where the RP's are, the tervigons may be forced to come in grossly out of position from where I would like to have them come in. Still, I suppose I should consider it the next time they meet.

I find that taking HC on the off-chance that I go up against SW Rune Priest-spam is not a good investment. There's probably only a 1 in 10 chance that bug will go up against SW in a tournament environment and then it's probably more common to go up against TWC-space wolves or a Logan build at that. RP-spam is definitely a rare build that not many players (besides myself) run. HC does have its uses, but this isn't really the right tyranid build to take advantage of it IMO.

DarthDiggler wrote:
You needed the Flyrants to be above the Rune Priests to make sure they were in Shadows range. Nothing you could do on turn one, but after that those Rune Priests needed to be the top priority.

In hindsight, I actually agree. Instead of sending my flyrants after the long fangs, I think I should have sent them after the 2 Jaws priests. Granted, the way the game was going (SW making their saves against the devourers, the Warlord getting grounded and dying due to failed saves), the results might have still been the same anyways. But still, going after the HQ units does have its advantages:

- You are targeting a scoring unit - the troops that the RP is with.

- You are going after a very dangerous unit, the RP's.

- You will be putting them into Shadows range.

That was just another mistake that put the nail in the coffin for the bugs. Though the way the dice was going, it probably wouldn't have mattered much.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Easier said then done. Against wolves or DE the Tyranids are at a disadvantage if they do not go first and even then they need everything with their MC do go right. It's not can the bugs win, but can they win consistently?

Agreed. First turn helps tremendously now and tyranids need to play an almost mistake-free game against these type of armies. And even then, slightly unfavorable dice can spell doom for them. In a normally bad matchup, the favored army can afford to make more mistakes or have a little dice go against them. The underdog army cannot.

Did you forget about the Night Fight, or did it just not come into play the first turn? I thought for sure that was going to give the bugs a leg up to start the game.

 jy2 wrote:

 jifel wrote:
Did you consider putting the Tervigons in reserve? I now bring Hive Commander for the sole reason of having the option of Reserves when I see a drop Jaws list like this. Nids have a good match up against almost every army, and probably have one of the fewest amounts of "counter lists" but boy does that list counter us hard.

No, I didn't. I still have some reservations about putting them into reserves. On the turn they come in, they cannot cast their blessings powers, cannot spawn gants and cannot assault. In addition, with the long fangs and depending on where the RP's are, the tervigons may be forced to come in grossly out of position from where I would like to have them come in. Still, I suppose I should consider it the next time they meet.

I don't take Hive Commander solely for that, my bad. I also have Ymgarls and the Doom. But my current "general plan", always subject to change of course, is if I see drop Jaws and he has first turn, to reserve at least two Tervis and let him come in, and then send two Flyrants straight for the preists. I'm quite willing to then bring in the Tervi's next to the preists, as I assume they'll be at least locked in combat with a Flyrant, or two (depends on the board and presense of Long Fangs)

You do have a point though, but here's something to consider. Catalyst may be used after moving, therefore reserves... It's worth a consideration to not swap against this army, especially if (with Hive Commander) you choose to outflank. Not on all of your Tervigons, as this is where Warp Speed really shines, but perhaps on one.

whoadirty wrote:
Did you forget about the Night Fight, or did it just not come into play the first turn? I thought for sure that was going to give the bugs a leg up to start the game.

No I didn't forget. Without NF, the wolves would have probably done more damage with their shooting. Don't forget that Goldmoon's fangs were re-rolling to hit due to Prescience. Also, I believe a couple of the plasmas were able to fire as well after moving.

 jifel wrote:

I don't take Hive Commander solely for that, my bad. I also have Ymgarls and the Doom. But my current "general plan", always subject to change of course, is if I see drop Jaws and he has first turn, to reserve at least two Tervis and let him come in, and then send two Flyrants straight for the preists. I'm quite willing to then bring in the Tervi's next to the preists, as I assume they'll be at least locked in combat with a Flyrant, or two (depends on the board and presense of Long Fangs)

You do have a point though, but here's something to consider. Catalyst may be used after moving, therefore reserves... It's worth a consideration to not swap against this army, especially if (with Hive Commander) you choose to outflank. Not on all of your Tervigons, as this is where Warp Speed really shines, but perhaps on one.

No worries. Yeah, HC definitely makes more sense if you have more reserve units like ymgarls and trygons. And I hadn't thought about going Reserves and then keeping Catalyst. That's a pretty good tip. There's only 1 caveat, however. In the BAO scenarios, you have to select your psychic powers before you roll to see who goes first. In the BAO, it goes like this:

1. Roll for psychic powers and warlord traits.
2. Roll for Night-fighting.
3. Roll to pick sides. Set up any fortifications.
4. Place objectives.
5. Roll for first turn.

Of course, you can always choose to have 1 tervigon keep the codex powers no matter who is going first, but for me, it's just too tempting to roll for the book powers. I like to take that risk because I think the rewards is usually worth it.

Of course, this is from the perspective of someone who hasn't played against the wolves with bugs in a long long time. My strategy may change with more experience.

Tough loss!

Glad to see everyone getting excited for the BAO!

 jifel wrote:
Did you consider putting the Tervigons in reserve? I now bring Hive Commander for the sole reason of having the option of Reserves when I see a drop Jaws list like this. Nids have a good match up against almost every army, and probably have one of the fewest amounts of "counter lists" but boy does that list counter us hard.

I was thinking the same thing. When I played Nidz I always held certain units in reserve.

I think because jy2 know his Nid army so well it gave SW an unfair advantage as little to no mistakes occurred on their side. I really think the Nid list presented here could beat this SW army. I had special techniques to keep Jaws priests at arms length even if they were podding into play. Tervigons never really had a chance. Doom did nothing. Biovores also were lack luster this time. Like I said before the SW got all the breaks.

In terms of terrain I think the board was lacking and encourage more of it in the future.

 Reecius wrote:
Tough loss!

Glad to see everyone getting excited for the BAO!

It comes with the territory. No biggie....as long as you can learn from your loss.

I have a series of practice BAO battle reports (though some at 2K instead of 1750) that you can find in the battle reports thread link below.

 Dozer Blades wrote:

 jifel wrote:
Did you consider putting the Tervigons in reserve? I now bring Hive Commander for the sole reason of having the option of Reserves when I see a drop Jaws list like this. Nids have a good match up against almost every army, and probably have one of the fewest amounts of "counter lists" but boy does that list counter us hard.

I was thinking the same thing. When I played Nidz I always held certain units in reserve.

I think because jy2 know his Nid army so well it gave SW an unfair advantage as little to no mistakes occurred on their side. I really think the Nid list presented here could beat this SW army. I had special techniques to keep Jaws priests at arms length even if they were podding into play. Tervigons never really had a chance. Doom did nothing. Biovores also were lack luster this time. Like I said before the SW got all the breaks.

In terms of terrain I think the board was lacking and encourage more of it in the future.

I may have to change my way of thinking. Up until now, I haven't really faced any army that truly threatened my tervigons. Therefore, I never even considered reserving them before. But if I were to play against Jaws wolves again, I may have to consider that option.

I also feel that the bugs can win. Out of about 10 games against Rune Priest-spam/missile-spam wolves, I feel that they can win about 3 or 4 of them. The wolves will win more consistently but I feel that this is an improvement over 5th. If we were talking about the same matchup in 5th, tyranids would probably only win 1 or 2 times out of 10.

As far as terrain is concerned, I acutally had 3 LOS-blocking terrain, 2 hills and 4 area terrains. Any more and I'd probably be at about 1/3 terrain as opposed to about 25%. Granted, they aren't tall terrain (except for the LOS-blockers) but they take up a decent amount of real estate.

I think you can do better versus SW in general. I would develop some anti JAWS tactics.

The table looks sparse in the pictures but I'll take your word for it.

Yeah, going to need a few more test games against them to "perfect" my anti-Jaws strategy. And the perfect strategy would be to probably go first, not make any mistakes and roll better.

"Roll more 6's" is usually what I end up with as a takeaway from a game. Not much I could've done differently other than that.

Or 1's in the case of Jaws. :-)

1's or 2's in the case of Jaws.

Tervigon's are I1 so 2s wouldn't work...

MCs get a +1 bonus versus JotWW.

.... Which I always forget. Thanks for the reminder.

No worries. There's a lot of things that I as a tyranid player forget also....like Fear and Hammer or Wrath on my MC's, It Will Not Die from Endurance and Fleet from Warp Speed.

In my experience vs SW you're much better off throwing both Flyrants up into the middle of the field to SITW the priests and force the enemy to pour fire into them, as well as ensuring your Tervigons are out of LOS/Range of JOTWW turn 1 if you are going second.

Tervigons more than Flyrants win games against SW. If your flyrants can cripple 2 long fang units and absorb a turn of fire, while keeping all of your tervigons up, they've done their job.

Ymgarls are also insanely powerful in this matchup, with the ability to lock down a RP unit or pick up a long fang unit.

Bad luck for you made this matchup look a lot worse than it is, I think.

I may just do that also, though my concern then is that there will be a lot of GH units that can try to ground my flyrants. And once they do, it's almost a given that ML's will take it out unless it's got T9 from Iron Arm. But that definitely is a tactic that I just may employ next time as an option to reserving my tervigons.

Ymgarls are definitely very useful against long fang-spam. Against them, I feel that there are 2 effective solutions - ymgarls and biovores. I chose to go with biovores instead whereas another great tyranid player here - Janthkin - opted for ymgarls. Man oh man, why does the tyranid Elites have to be so stacked - hive guards, the Doom, ymgarls and now even the zoans are really good.

Yeah, bad luck turned this match into a blowout. I was expecting a much closer game.

You can use double FOC to get around the problem with many of the best units being elite choices.

That's true...but I try not to do it. Running 2 FOC's can be really abusive and I try to avoid doing that. Imagine 6 squads of long fangs or 6 annihilation barges or 4 flyrants. You can really spam these units. Normally I don't play double-FOC's unless my opponent and I agree to it beforehand.

Ironically, by adding in ymgarls, my tyranids would actually be less spammy because I would most likely have to drop 1 unit of tervigon + gants in order to fit them in. Then again, I try not to do it personally unless both my opponent and I agree to it prior.

I don't see double FOC as abusive. It opens up a lot of really cool options. It's intent is to help older armies.

 jy2 wrote:
I may just do that also, though my concern then is that there will be a lot of GH units that can try to ground my flyrants. And once they do, it's almost a given that ML's will take it out unless it's got T9 from Iron Arm. But that definitely is a tactic that I just may employ next time as an option to reserving my tervigons.

Ymgarls are definitely very useful against long fang-spam. Against them, I feel that there are 2 effective solutions - ymgarls and biovores. I chose to go with biovores instead whereas another great tyranid player here - Janthkin - opted for ymgarls. Man oh man, why does the tyranid Elites have to be so stacked - hive guards, the Doom, ymgarls and now even the zoans are really good.

Yeah, bad luck turned this match into a blowout. I was expecting a much closer game.

It's counter intuitive in that you're really jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire with the flyrants, but it keeps the tervigons up and at the very worst, buys you a turn. Hopefully it neuters two long fang units, stops some psyker shenanigans and you still keep a flyrant up. Losing Tervigons turn 1 is just absolutely brutal, and this is a matchup where you need to take control of the pace of the fight. You're not going to break the backs of a SW army by removing a single target, so you've really got to play the attrition game. The only way for that to work is to keep the gaunts coming and the rune priests under SITW or locked in combat.

I love 1 unit of HG/Ymgarls and Doom, as well as a unit of 3 biovores. It gives a ton of versatility. Ymgarls are fantastic at wrecking parking lots now that they always hit on a 3 at worst, they have a massive threat range and is yet another zoning tool. I love locking down a tough unit with them so it's stuck in the doom's aura.

I feel like Tyranids will, on average, have what it takes to bring it to the wolves, but like a unit of terminators, they have trouble dealing with bad dice. The Wolves are dangerous down to the last man, so the Tyranids can't sacrifice a few units to break their backs and just mop them up.

Out of interest you don't mention "deny the witch" which can be used against JOTWW however according to a quick look up for the FAQ only the first model hit can DTW, It would take careful positioning as you want the power to hit the Tervigon with +1 for being a psyker.

any chance you would battle against competitive Eldar in forseeable future?

Also will you post batrep from BAO?

 Dozer Blades wrote:
I don't see double FOC as abusive. It opens up a lot of really cool options. It's intent is to help older armies.

It's a double-edged sword. It adds more flexibility. At the same time, it can be abused as well. I'm not against double-FOC and will consider using it, especially if I want to go really competitive. However, in casual games, I don't normally do it unless both me and my opponent agreed to it.

 Traceoftoxin wrote:

It's counter intuitive in that you're really jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire with the flyrants, but it keeps the tervigons up and at the very worst, buys you a turn. Hopefully it neuters two long fang units, stops some psyker shenanigans and you still keep a flyrant up. Losing Tervigons turn 1 is just absolutely brutal, and this is a matchup where you need to take control of the pace of the fight. You're not going to break the backs of a SW army by removing a single target, so you've really got to play the attrition game. The only way for that to work is to keep the gaunts coming and the rune priests under SITW or locked in combat.

I love 1 unit of HG/Ymgarls and Doom, as well as a unit of 3 biovores. It gives a ton of versatility. Ymgarls are fantastic at wrecking parking lots now that they always hit on a 3 at worst, they have a massive threat range and is yet another zoning tool. I love locking down a tough unit with them so it's stuck in the doom's aura.

I feel like Tyranids will, on average, have what it takes to bring it to the wolves, but like a unit of terminators, they have trouble dealing with bad dice. The Wolves are dangerous down to the last man, so the Tyranids can't sacrifice a few units to break their backs and just mop them up.

I suppose sometimes you need to take a gamble. It does make sense to expose the flyrants, as you are shifting the risk from the tervigons to them instead. And as long as they are flying, they are actually more resilient than the tervies. However, as the SW went first, it is almost a guarantee that they will get at least 1 Jaws off outside of Shadows before you can do anything about it.

I also believe that tyranids can compete against the wolves. Maybe not on a completely equal footing, especially if they spam Rune Priests and long fangs and depending on terrain, but I believe they do have the tools to do so.

 Firefash wrote:
Out of interest you don't mention "deny the witch" which can be used against JOTWW however according to a quick look up for the FAQ only the first model hit can DTW, It would take careful positioning as you want the power to hit the Tervigon with +1 for being a psyker.

Oops. I actually forgot to Deny the Witch for Jaws.

Thanks for the reminder.

Fikol wrote:
any chance you would battle against competitive Eldar in forseeable future?

Also will you post batrep from BAO?

I will probably play against one of these 2 eldar players (or maybe even both) in the near future. Both run deathstar eldar/deldar armies btw.

40K Video Bat Rep: Hot Eldar on Eldar Action!

BTW, I'm 2-0 against Frankie's Harliestar, though both were tough, tough matches which I barely won.

I have yet to play Grant's new Seer Council list but they look really tough.


And yeah, I plan to document my BAO experiences.

Wow, jaws is so good still. I might just switch of to space wolves for 6th edition, shooting is up and assault is down as my angels have been not so scary anymore, love you battle reports sir.

 Ecstasy in Service wrote:
Wow, jaws is so good still. I might just switch of to space wolves for 6th edition, shooting is up and assault is down as my angels have been not so scary anymore, love you battle reports sir.

Thanks!

Space Wolves are still very good IMO. Moreover, the wolves and eldar are the 2 armies with the best psychic defense. Jaws is situational depending on the army you play against. It could be awesome in some games (i.e. necrons, tau, tyranids, nurgle, orks) but medicocre in others (i.e. eldar, dark eldar, slaanesh, mech). The good thing is that you can always swap it out for the rulebook powers, which are usually very good anyways.