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It appears that the current trend in competitive 40K is what is known as the MSU army, or Multiple Small Units army. Basically, this type of army uses a min-max approach to get the "most bang-for-the-buck" type of army. It is usually mechanized, uses multiple minimum-size units and takes as much firepower as you can get. It uses the vehicles or even the units inside them as screening units, or "roadblock" units, to absorb enemy charges and then concentrates fire on them afterwards. The amount of firepower is usually staggering.

This coming weekend, I will be facing the Nightmare-mech-Blood-Angel-army-of-doom with my Tyranids. I wonder if Tyranids have what it takes to survive this type of army.


HIVE FLEET PANDORA (Mine)
Hive Tyrant - 2x Twin-linked Brainleech Devourers
2x Tyrant Guards
Hive Tyrant - 2x Twin-linked Brainleech Devourers
2x Tyrant Guards

3x Hive Guards
3x Hive Guards
3x Hive Guards

Tervigon - Catalyst, Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs
10x Termagants
Tervigon - Catalyst, Cluster Spines, Toxin Sacs
10x Termagants

Harpy - Cluster Spines, Twin-linked Heavy Venom Cannon
Harpy - Cluster Spines, Twin-linked Heavy Venom Cannon

Trygon
Trygon
Trygon

TOTAL - 2500pts



BLOOD ANGELS
Librarian - Blood Lance, Shield of Sanguinius
Librarian - Blood Lance, Shield of Sanguinius

6x Sternguards - 2x Missile Launchers
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
6x Sternguards - 2x Missile Launchers
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas

5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas
5x Assault Marines - Flamer (no jump packs)
Razorback - Lascannon + Twin-linked Plasmas

Baal Predator - Twin-linked Assault Cannons, Heavy Bolter Sponsoons
Baal Predator - Twin-linked Assault Cannons, Heavy Bolter Sponsoons
Baal Predator - Twin-linked Assault Cannons, Heavy Bolter Sponsoons

Predator - Autocannon, Lascannon Sponsoons
Predator - Autocannon, Lascannon Sponsoons
Predator - Autocannon, Lascannon Sponsoons

TOTAL - 2500pts



How do you think the tyranids will fare against this type of army?


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PRE-GAME ANALYSIS:

Blood Angels: His strategy is really rather simple. Just sit back and shoot. When the TMC's (Tyranid monstrous creatures), get closer, start moving them. Screen off nearby threats by putting a vehicle in front of it or by forming a "wall" of tanks and forcing me to hit them on 6's...and then shoot some more. Librarians should be casting Shields every turn to give the "exposed" (i.e. front) tanks 5+ cover (rear tanks should be getting 4+ cover anyways).

On turns 3 or 4, baals should be heading off to contest enemy objectives. If needed, razorbacks and even the predators should help out with contesting.

Annihilation favors my nids if I can avoid from getting tabled, as Blood Angels have a lot more kill points. Capture and control, I would say, is fairly even. My nids would have to sway through a forest of tanks. Then again, I'll have a tervigon and lots of gaunts sitting on my own objective. Seize Ground I believe would also benefit the Tyranids as I have a minimum of 6 scoring units and possibly 8 or 9. While he's busy dealing with my TMC's and hive guards, my termagants would be quietly infesting the objectives.

1st turn may very well determine the victor. Whoever goes first has a chance to seriously hurt the other army. In this case, BA is a lot more deadly with 1st turn than the tyranids as their shooting is a lot more devastating.


Tyranids: I need to take advantage of terrain as much as possible. That is the only way my trygons will probably get cover. Other than that, my army is very resilient. The most he can do is probably take out 1-2 TMC's a turn...that is, until my nids get to within plasma-double-tap range. Then that's when he'll really bring in the hurt. The key here IMO is target prioritization. Who he targets will probably determine if he wins or not. Now some people are saying that he should target the harpies and tervigons first. I believe the key would be in wiping out my hive guards. If he can do that, then he's got the game. If not, I have a chance. IMO, limiting my shooting is the key to victory for the Angels.

I'm hoping for Seize Ground. It's my best chance at winning. "Distract" him with the biggies and then win with the gribblies. I also like annihilation. As long as my hive guards are alive, I'm fairly confident I can take down 2-4 tanks a turn.

As for deployment, please, anything but Dawn of War. That is murder on a primarily foot army, though spearhead could also be bad if he deploys everything way back.


Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Spearhead
Initiative: Tyranids

Note: Descriptions of the positioning of units will be from the perspective of the tyranids (my perspective).


Deployment:
We take turns placing terrains. I end up putting 2 high impassable terrains in the middle right and middle left sections of the map. He places 2 of the larger area terrains in the middle of the map between the 2 impassable terrains. We then put a couple of smaller area terrains in both deployment zones. Of course, all this was done before rolling for mission, deployment and initiative.


Tyranid deployment.


Tyranid objective (the Broodlord).


BA deployment. We used a lot of proxies in this game. The leman russes are predators, the chimeras are baal predators and all rhinos are razorbacks.


BA objective (all the way in the corner).


Left 2 baals scout move 18" to the left. Right baal scout moves 18" as well.


Blood Angels then proceed to steal the initiative.


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BA1
He moves his middle predator and razorback 6" and his right 2 predators and razorback (with librarian) 12" to clear the impassable terrain. All baals move 6".

He then concentrates all his fire on 2 units of hive guards. Thanks to cover and the fact that all his plasmas were out of range, he only manages to kill 2 and put 1W on my left hive guards and put 1W on the right hive guards .


Tyranid 1
I don't spawn any termagants yet, and cast FNP on 2 trygons. Everyone advances with the units who don't shoot, run. His right librarian perils while trying to cast Shield of Sanguinius on a 6,6.

In shooting, my right hive guards immobilise and shake his right, single baal. My left, single hive guard (w/1W) immobilises his empty, left front razorback, and the middle hive guards immobilises, destroys 1 lascannon and shakes the middle predator.


BA2
Very little movement, if any. Both of the left baals concentrate fire on my lone hive guard. He goes-to-ground and survives! 2 predators and the right razorback combine to shoot down the closest trygon. The rest of BA shooting puts 3W on the 2nd closest trygon.


Tyranid 2
My left tervigon spawns 10 gaunts and stops. The right tervigon spawns 9 and is ok. Everything else moves forwards and those who don't shoot, once again runs. Only 1 tervigon successfully casts FNP (on the hive tyrant). His wounded librarian attempts to cast Shield again and croaks to his 2nd perils (1,1). Lol. What are the chances?

My harpy shakes his middle predator with its twin-linked heavy venom cannon, and then the right hive guards proceed to wreck it with their shooting. The middle hive guards shoot at and only manages to shake his right baal.

No assault yet.


BA3
Some of his vehicles move, but none move more than 6" so that they can still fire all their weapons. His left baal finally shoots down the solitary, left hive guard. The other baal puts 1W on my left tervigon (no cover to his rending shots). I believe the right predator puts another 1W on the wounded trygon (2W left). The rest of his army - 7 razorbacks with single-shot plasmas, 2 sternguard units with 4 missile launchers and 2+ inferno rounds and the middle predator - pumps my non-FNP'd tyrant unit full of laser, plasma, missiles and poisoned lead. When the smoke clears, I've only suffered 1W on the tyrant and 1W on the tyrant guard. Wow...


Tyranid 3
This could be the turning point. My tyranids should be in assault range now. Nids advance. Both tervigons fail to cast FNP, and his remaining librarian fails to cast Shield. There must be a Warp rift nearby.

My right hive guards completely whiff on their shooting. My middle hive guards immobilise, stun and blow off the plasma of another one of his front razorbacks. My hive tyrant then shoots at the same razorback and almost wrecks it if only it hadn't made one of it's cover saves. Looking back now, we played it wrong as that razorback shouldn't have had a cover save (the librarian failed in casting it). The other tyrant shoots at his sternguards and kill 1 missile launcher as well as 1 regular stern.

Onto assault. 1 harpy wrecks his immobilised, right baal while the 2nd harpy assaults and wrecks his right razorback (he forgot to move it last turn). Both trygons assault both predators, and both predators end up exploding. The left tervigon assaults one of his left baals and proceeds to immobilise and shake it.

Devastating turn for the Blood Angels.


BA4
Baal tank shocks the termagants in their way and moves 18" towards the tyranid objective, popping smoke along the way. Then the blood angels concentrate fire and kill the middle, healthy trygon.

In assault, my tervigon wrecks the immobilised baal that he assaulted last turn.


Tyranid 4
Harpy takes 1W to dangerous terrain (the wrecked predator). Tervigon goes after the baal. Everyone else besides the termagants on my objective advances.

In shooting, one of my tyrants shoot down 1 missile launcher and 1 regular sternguard. They then fail their morale and run off the board. Darn...I was planning to assault them and then consolidate towards his tanks (would've probably gained another 5-10" of movement). The other tyrant gets 2 pens on a razorback, but then he makes his Shield of Sanguinius cover save and only loses the twin-linked plasma. One of my harpies shakes another razorback with its heavy venom cannon. Llastly, 1 of the hive guards explode his librarian's razorback while the other unit of hive guards whiffs against his smoked baal (made his cover on the single pen).

My trygon assaults his disembarked assault squad and only kills 4 marines. They stick around. The hive tyrant and guards assault the razorback that they shot at. The guards make it into combat but my tyrant is just short (due to difficult terrain). They manage to stun the already weaponless, immobilised razorback with 4 glances. Woohoo. Finally, the tervigon assaults his baal but completely misses.


BA5
His shaken razorback zooms 18" to tank shock and screen out my harpy. His other razorbacks move back 6" towards his objective, and 1 squad of assault marines disembarks and runs towards it to make sure that they are within claiming range. His baal turbos forward 18", tank shocking my gaunts and contesting my objective. I need to kill his baal, otherwise, I may well lose. Another assault squad disembarks from the weaponless, immobilised razorback and gets ready to flame my termagants.

He fires 1 razorback within plasma double-tap range at my closest harpy - the one harpy that has a chance to contest his objective - and succeeds in shooting it down. The assault squad guns down 6 termagants, and the rest of his shooting puts 1W on the fresh tyrant and 1W on its tyrant guard.

In assault, my trygon wipes out his assault squad.


Tyranid 5
I am not within range to contest his objective. It'll probably take me at least 1 more turn to get there, and that is if there isn't a screen of vehicles and marines in my way. My only chance is to destroy his baal predator contesting my objective. Otherwise, if the game were to end this turn, I may lose.

Everyone advances. My tervigon goes after the contesting baal. His librarian fails to get off Shield due to my Shadows in the Warp. My tyrant shoots and then assaults his sternguards, wiping them out and consolidating towards his objective (but still far away). The other tyrant fires at his disembarked assault squad and wipes them out. The harpy shoots at his razorback, pens it but he then makes his cover save (from popping smoke last turn).

Last but not least, 6 hive guards fire 12 shots at his baal. I only manage to immobilise, stun and blow off its assault cannon. Damn.

My trygon assaults ad explodes a razorback, killing 1 marine nearby. The tervigon, on the other hand, fail to assault his immobilised baal due to difficult terrain.

Now he is claiming his objective and contesting mine. I have no objectives. We roll to see if the game continues and....




.....the roll is a '1'. Game Over.

Blood Angels - 1 objective. Tyranids - 0 objectives.


Victory to the Blood Angels!!!

Thats one.... odd BA army layout. I honestly think if the nids don't go first its curtains... at least 2 MC's will probably die in the initial volley (minimum)

If the Nid player gets caught in the open against that many Lascannons and that much Plasma, it's game over before it even starts. I think if they can get in range of their weapons, the BA will crumple without their Razorbacks, but until then.... eh.

Run! This is a canned hunt if I ever saw one.

That BA list is packing a crazy amount of firepower, enough to blast through a couple of MCs a turn even if you are in cover. This means that should you play an objective mission I doubt you are going to have any scoring units after turn 2. Normally I wouldn't bother going after Tervigons (as they aren't as threatening early on as the Harpies and Hive Guard) but only running two of them makes them a very tempting target. Having said that I doubt your opponent will in this case, he doesn't really care about Gaunts that much with all the backup flamers and everything in vehicles.

Basically I think you don't have enough ranged firepower, if he doesn't go for the Tervigons then the Harpies are dead turn 1 and then Hive Guard start dying turn 2 (probably 2 squads per turn, 3 x 2 T6 wounds is the same as one MC). Even assuming your shooting units don't get targeted early you have no way to do any significant damage back until you hit combat, Harpies have to be reasonably lucky to kill off Razorbacks and Hive Guard struggle for range. Your Trygons and Tyrants can obviously demolish vehicles in combat, but they are slow and he can feed you a single unit per turn to buy time if he needs to. Target priority is pretty obvious for your list and that BA list can blow through it very quickly, Harpies then Hive Guard (should both be gone well before you hit his lines) then Trygons then Tyrants (probably need to be delayed a bit) then finally Tervigons/Gaunts.

The list is built to slag high av infantry, mc, and vehicles.

A high speed swarm would end that list, say 90 gargoyles and a bucket of genestealers with some podding zoies and 2 primes in squads of gaunts for synapse, nothing over t4. 6 flamers won't do much against a real horde, say 6 hits and 4 kills per flamer, next turn the squad dies because razorbacks have no fire points.

A green tide will also slag that list. It lacks long range anti infantry to kill the 45 lootas with cover saves behind 180 boys.

The ba list has some serious weaknesses against horde and bleeds kp like crazy.

A high speed Nid list would still have issues with the BA list, you have no ranged anti tank at all which leave you relying on S4 (on the charge) hitting on 6's, maybe S5 for the Genestealers. Not a great plan for taking out 14 fast vehicles even if you do get a bucketload of attacks. Relying on assault means that even if you destroy the vehicles on the charge you are faced with a squad of angry marines inside. He doesn't fear the Zoanthropes because he has two hoods and Shield. You also seem to be missing the 3 Baals in there, which combined with the Razorbacks would probably give you the firepower to blast his synapse off the board in the first few turns. That leaves the Genestealers as a threat (flamer time) and the Gargoyles to be tank shocked off the table. Properly built it would have a chance though, probably a better bet than the OPs 3 Trygon list imo.

A Greed Tide would not do well against the BA list either, he can comfortably deal with a squad of Lootas per turn (or more likely force morale on two) and in return the Lootas can kill 1-2 vehicles max (Shield, Cover, being dead etc). 180 boys isn't that much of a threat because they are so slow and everything in the BA is in vehicles, even in a KP mission he can clear off the Lootas, get 1-2 units of Boys and still be in a good position to win assuming the Lootas get a couple of vehicles and he feeds a few units to the Boyz to slow them down. If there were Kans as well then its even worse, they would be pumped full of holes even with a KFF.

Anyways I'm getting a bit off topic here. For one thing neither of the builds you mentioned are particularly competitive (as they are both very easily countered by common builds and generally a pain to play), I wouldn't say the BA list is that weak against Hordes, it can handle them, but I do agree that it could do with a few more flamers and added equipment for the Assault squads (lose one of the Librarians or change up the very strange Elites choices).

Zid wrote:Thats one.... odd BA army layout. I honestly think if the nids don't go first its curtains... at least 2 MC's will probably die in the initial volley (minimum)

Even if I do go first, I'd probably still lose 1-2 MC's per turn, maybe more....

Pvt. Jet wrote:If the Nid player gets caught in the open against that many Lascannons and that much Plasma, it's game over before it even starts. I think if they can get in range of their weapons, the BA will crumple without their Razorbacks, but until then.... eh.

I don't think BA will "crumple" without their razorbacks. One of the things that's so tough about the BA list is that there is a lot of built-in redundancy. Destroy 1 unit? There's still 7 more. As a matter of fact, it relies on its redundancy in order to kill the enemy. Let's say my trygon gets close. Then he just lets me destroy 1 razorback (or the squad inside) and next turn concentrates fire on the trygon to kill it. It is by throwing these "sacrificial" units at the enemy - by delaying the enemy so that he can shoot at them some more - where MSU armies excel. They wear down the enemy through attrition and volume of fire.

warpcrafter wrote:Run! This is a canned hunt if I ever saw one.

Heh, heh...it may be a monster hunt....

Getting the batrep soon?


This is probably an inappropriate forum for critiques, but when my nid armies that look very similar to the OPs get wins against high powered mech armies like that blood angel army, its usually after all of my offensive tools have been removed.

What tends to happen is that my heavies hq and elites get prioritized. they aren't too difficult for firepower armies to handle, but it does take a certain amount of time. All the while tervigons reproduce and shuffle up to obejective positions. Right around the end of turn 4 I'm out of hive guard, and MCs, and then in many games my opponent will look down at the table and see what he wasn't policing. A rampant outbreak of t3 models.

I've heard tourney opponents say "oh, I can't kill all of those in two turns." The win isn't pretty, in fact there is a lot of scrabbling and barely holding on, going to ground with battered units of termagants and desperately trying to destroy objective blocking transports with tervigons, but the wins can be had.

So if I caught you before you played your game. Make a lot of noise with the hive guard and trygons. make the tyrants very inconvenient, and then quietly 'infest' the objectives. If BA guy goes after the tervigons early, then do your best to hunker down and don't let an opportunity to get aggressively violent with trygons pass you by. If he saws your hive guard down and then uses mass tl plasma guns to drop your trygons before they get to flip any boxes, then just keep in mind that you could still win without your "tools". Just make the rest of the board termagants.

I also think you need more tervigons for this plan to work, but in the absence of them, just don't roll doubles on progenitor.

Dawn of War? No.

Everything else? Maybe.

Powerguy wrote:That BA list is packing a crazy amount of firepower, enough to blast through a couple of MCs a turn even if you are in cover. This means that should you play an objective mission I doubt you are going to have any scoring units after turn 2. Normally I wouldn't bother going after Tervigons (as they aren't as threatening early on as the Harpies and Hive Guard) but only running two of them makes them a very tempting target. Having said that I doubt your opponent will in this case, he doesn't really care about Gaunts that much with all the backup flamers and everything in vehicles.

Basically I think you don't have enough ranged firepower, if he doesn't go for the Tervigons then the Harpies are dead turn 1 and then Hive Guard start dying turn 2 (probably 2 squads per turn, 3 x 2 T6 wounds is the same as one MC). Even assuming your shooting units don't get targeted early you have no way to do any significant damage back until you hit combat, Harpies have to be reasonably lucky to kill off Razorbacks and Hive Guard struggle for range. Your Trygons and Tyrants can obviously demolish vehicles in combat, but they are slow and he can feed you a single unit per turn to buy time if he needs to. Target priority is pretty obvious for your list and that BA list can blow through it very quickly, Harpies then Hive Guard (should both be gone well before you hit his lines) then Trygons then Tyrants (probably need to be delayed a bit) then finally Tervigons/Gaunts.

I also believe target prioritization is key for a BA win. Target and kill the right units and he should have the game in hand. However, the army is more resilient than most people think. For example, the hive guards may only be 3x2 T6 wounds, but in cover, they're more like 12 T6 wounds. Everything should get cover with the exceptions of the trygons....they're just too large to hide behind most terrain. The tyrant + guards is more like 16 T6 wounds with cover and the tervigon will get cover by hiding behind the tyrant as well. And they have no reason to fire at the gants with their lascannons and plasmas or even the baals. Not when those gaunts can go to ground for 3+ cover. Not when there are other, more pressing "threats" around. And not when I could potentially have 6-8 scoring units. Believe me, if there's one thing nids are good at, that's multiple-objective games.

schadenfreude wrote:The list is built to slag high av infantry, mc, and vehicles.

A high speed swarm would end that list, say 90 gargoyles and a bucket of genestealers with some podding zoies and 2 primes in squads of gaunts for synapse, nothing over t4. 6 flamers won't do much against a real horde, say 6 hits and 4 kills per flamer, next turn the squad dies because razorbacks have no fire points.

A green tide will also slag that list. It lacks long range anti infantry to kill the 45 lootas with cover saves behind 180 boys.

The ba list has some serious weaknesses against horde and bleeds kp like crazy.

I'm not so sure about a swarm list, but I do think lots of outflanking genestealers could work against this army. Zoans are not really as effective, not when he has 2 librarians and Shield of Sanguinius that'll give his transports 5+ cover.

Kill Points is an inherent weakness in MSU armies. However, they have a very nasty alpha strike and usually their firepower is enough to table most opponent.

I can't really speak for Tyranids, but I think a Kan Wall could potentially beat that BA list. They either shoot at you, then get assaulted by something else, or they run away and don't shoot.

So I think Nids can do it.


Also, I think Tyranofexen would be better than the Trygons. Much better AT.

Powerguy wrote:A high speed Nid list would still have issues with the BA list, you have no ranged anti tank at all which leave you relying on S4 (on the charge) hitting on 6's, maybe S5 for the Genestealers. Not a great plan for taking out 14 fast vehicles even if you do get a bucketload of attacks. Relying on assault means that even if you destroy the vehicles on the charge you are faced with a squad of angry marines inside. He doesn't fear the Zoanthropes because he has two hoods and Shield. You also seem to be missing the 3 Baals in there, which combined with the Razorbacks would probably give you the firepower to blast his synapse off the board in the first few turns. That leaves the Genestealers as a threat (flamer time) and the Gargoyles to be tank shocked off the table. Properly built it would have a chance though, probably a better bet than the OPs 3 Trygon list imo.

Good analysis. I'm starting to think that maybe I should use 3x10 genestealers (w/Broodlord) instead of the trygons. We'll see.

Powerguy wrote:
A Greed Tide would not do well against the BA list either, he can comfortably deal with a squad of Lootas per turn (or more likely force morale on two) and in return the Lootas can kill 1-2 vehicles max (Shield, Cover, being dead etc). 180 boys isn't that much of a threat because they are so slow and everything in the BA is in vehicles, even in a KP mission he can clear off the Lootas, get 1-2 units of Boys and still be in a good position to win assuming the Lootas get a couple of vehicles and he feeds a few units to the Boyz to slow them down. If there were Kans as well then its even worse, they would be pumped full of holes even with a KFF.

I do see the Green Tide as giving the BA list some problems. Then again, the BA list would give them problems as well. Relying on assault to take down vehicles, especially if they're mainly S4 is sub-optimal at best. Then again, the BA list probably wouldn't be able to kill them fast enough.

Shep wrote:Getting the batrep soon?

Playing this weekend, so the batrep probably won't come out until Mon.

Shep wrote:
This is probably an inappropriate forum for critiques, but when my nid armies that look very similar to the OPs get wins against high powered mech armies like that blood angel army, its usually after all of my offensive tools have been removed.

It's ok. I don't think many of my TMC's will survive. Probably not even my hive guards, unless I can find somewhere out of LOS for them to camp and shoot. But with 64 T6 wounds, with the majority getting cover, who knows.

Shep wrote:
What tends to happen is that my heavies hq and elites get prioritized. they aren't too difficult for firepower armies to handle, but it does take a certain amount of time. All the while tervigons reproduce and shuffle up to obejective positions. Right around the end of turn 4 I'm out of hive guard, and MCs, and then in many games my opponent will look down at the table and see what he wasn't policing. A rampant outbreak of t3 models.

I've heard tourney opponents say "oh, I can't kill all of those in two turns." The win isn't pretty, in fact there is a lot of scrabbling and barely holding on, going to ground with battered units of termagants and desperately trying to destroy objective blocking transports with tervigons, but the wins can be had.

So if I caught you before you played your game. Make a lot of noise with the hive guard and trygons. make the tyrants very inconvenient, and then quietly 'infest' the objectives. If BA guy goes after the tervigons early, then do your best to hunker down and don't let an opportunity to get aggressively violent with trygons pass you by. If he saws your hive guard down and then uses mass tl plasma guns to drop your trygons before they get to flip any boxes, then just keep in mind that you could still win without your "tools". Just make the rest of the board termagants.

True dat. Agree with you 100%. Now I only hope I get Seize Ground with 5 objectives.

Shep wrote:I also think you need more tervigons for this plan to work, but in the absence of them, just don't roll doubles on progenitor.

Swapped out that 3rd tervigon for more shooting (harpies). Hope I don't regret it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Blackmoor wrote:Dawn of War? No.

Everything else? Maybe.

Regarding DOW, it washes out. They may miss 1 turn of shooting with DOW, but then my foot nids have to cover an extra 12" of movement.

Snikkyd wrote:I can't really speak for Tyranids, but I think a Kan Wall could potentially beat that BA list. They either shoot at you, then get assaulted by something else, or they run away and don't shoot.

So I think Nids can do it.


Also, I think Tyranofexen would be better than the Trygons. Much better AT.

I was debating whether or not to take the T-fex also. Personally, I'm not a big fan of them, but I could use the extra shooting. But in the end, I opted for the trygons instead. Hopefully, I won't regret that.

I hate to say it but this matchup looks pretty bad for the Nids. The only good thing is that there isn't a lot of CC power going for the BAs. If all 3 Trygons came up on the same round then they could conceivably make it into assault, but aren't going to do enough damage to pull a win out for the Nids. The poor two tervigons are going to be tervigone on turn 1 and the rest of the nids will just be cleanup. If the Nids get furst turn, can get their hive guards into range of the razorbacks, and get good trygon deep strikes and fleet rolls, and the BA player doesn't have great shooting, they could be victorious.

Not to veer too far off, but does anyone make army lists anymore or do you just pick 3 units and cram as many as you can into a list?

RxGhost wrote:Not to veer too far off, but does anyone make army lists anymore or do you just pick 3 units and cram as many as you can into a list?

I'm hearing what you say. Its quite annoying how overly competitive some people make their lists. I understand the fun of making a really tight list and the challenge involved but the games (in my opinion) are much more fun if there are weaknesses in your army to compensate for, and variation is always a good thing!

Imp. Monkey

I don't know, I think it's probably because of my own opinions about the 'ard boyz stlye format for games...mostly that it's quite possibly the worst metric to grade and build lists with.

Is using style and format in the context of that sentence redundant?

Its going to come down to how the BA shooting phase goes...... Those lascannons are going to be devastating!

Now that I think about it, this whole game could come down to who goes first

Think about it, one good round of Nids shooting could disable enough of the BA firepower to soften the blow.

This is one of the better Lists I have seen in a while for blood angels.

@ Snikkyd. The Nid list has nowhere near enough first turn shooting to reduce the amount of firepower coming back at them. The Harpies have to be lucky to kill vehicles (stun/shake more likely which I guess is almost good enough) but there are only two of them and losing 2 Razorbacks isn't going to make much of a difference. The Hive Guard will obviously make a huge mess of Razorbacks, but they are very unlikely to have range until turn 2 provided the BA player is paying attention (he has no reason whatsoever to close the range, he can sit on the table edge with everything for a couple of turns). Again there is only 3 squads of them, which limits them to killing 3 Razorbacks per turn max which I doubt would be enough.

I guess thats why he should have taken Tyrannofexen like I said, they're way better, especially against mech.

If he had them, he could take out 3-4 Razorbacks per turn. Just speaking on mathhammer.

Just played 2 tough games over the weekend against the Blood Angels army. I will be posting the reports in several parts so please check back occasionally. I also took some pictures, but as the BA army is mainly proxies, I won't be posting too many pictures.

I have the feeling that if your opponent could place the objective outside the table, he totally would.
Good job smashing his gunline, I hope the game went to turn 6.

Not to rain on your parade, but your Tyranid list is an example of an MSU army.

Fearspect wrote:Not to rain on your parade, but your Tyranid list is an example of an MSU army.

Hardly. He has 2 minimum sized troop choices, everything else is maxed out, a lone unit choice or 2 out of 3 possible (in the case of tyrant guard).

The BA list has 6 min troop choices and the 2 elites are almost minimum sized (6 instead of 5)

Does this list win by flooding the table with a large amount of separate targets (yes/no)?

Min sized units has nothing to do with a MSU list's effectiveness, that just happens to be the requirement for Razorbacks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does this list win by flooding the table with a large amount of separate targets (yes/no)?

Min sized units has nothing to do with a MSU list's effectiveness, that just happens to be the requirement for Razorbacks.

The battle report is now concluded. Please check on the opening post of this thread for results.

Fearspect wrote:Not to rain on your parade, but your Tyranid list is an example of an MSU army.

Probably, though the MSU ones I see normally have 5 tervigons and also some tyrannofexes. I guess you could say mine is a more offensive, shooty variant of it. I also hit harder in assault with the trygons and tyrants.

Fearspect wrote:Does this list win by flooding the table with a large amount of separate targets (yes/no)?

Min sized units has nothing to do with a MSU list's effectiveness, that just happens to be the requirement for Razorbacks.

That's just a side effect of the tervigons spawning gaunts. But not counting the newly spawned gaunts, I've only got 16KP's (14 actual separate targets), compared to 24KP's for the Blood Angels.

For sure, I just want this to contrast with say, taking giant units of warriors as an example.

They take up a good chunk of points and actually dilute their potential (as they can only target a single unit with their shooting at a time). Meanwhile, if you had many small units of them, you could mass target a single enemy, or if they are destroyed with the first volley, the rest can move onto other targets. Likewise, you getting a unit focused down will have a minor effect on your overall firepower. This is the strength of MSU.

The big problem with that BA army is what happens when he runs into an ork army that puts 200 boys on the table? all that lascannon and plasma means dick to the ork army. the same goes for a foot guard army.