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So I put together a fluffy Tyranid vanguard list for an opening game of a campaign. Three Broodlords, 30 Stealers, Deathleaper, 5 Lictors and the only non-vanguard organism models being Raveners and the Red Terror, rationalising they're fast and a bit ahead of the lines.

Opponent's list includes 129 Conscripts, 4 Flamer Special squads, Yarrick, two officers, Chimeras and a Russ. I think his idea of a 'fluffy ambushed patrol list' is different to mine!

My question is: is there any point in playing this game now? How can I win with what I've listed other than weighted dice? :-D

All Mathhammering points to an early bath for the gribblies. The kicker is that due to Transports he'll have fewer drops and will go first...

Depends, how big is the board, what game type, deployment? May different variables. Tyranids are pretty good, supporting a lot of attacks. Focus on cheep units like him and spam what you got. Try some MORE sacrifice units that eat overwatch and shots and are cheap. Guard have advantage in this match up, so counter that with plenty of Stealers. Out horde a horde to become the better horde horder.

Have Death Leaper target Yarrick to hopefully take him down. If he doesn't leave you room to deploy Death Leaper, go for the bushes! In the bushes Death Leaper can't be hit by Conscripts (they'd need a 7+ to hit). Regular Lictors too can then absorb a TON of firepower from the Conscripts. Goad out the Flamers this way and mind-bolt them with Broodlords. Otherwise, hit him on all sides and try to engage as much as possible in one round of combat so he's forced to fall back or otherwise get munched. With the run + charge of Stealers and Broodlords, you should be able to jump past his Rapid Fire range.

 NenkotaMoon wrote:
Depends, how big is the board, what game type, deployment? May different variables. Tyranids are pretty good, supporting a lot of attacks. Focus on cheep units like him and spam what you got. Try some MORE sacrifice units that eat overwatch and shots and are cheap. Guard have advantage in this match up, so counter that with plenty of Stealers. Out horde a horde to become the better horde horder.

My list is above, unless I change it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yarium wrote:
Have Death Leaper target Yarrick to hopefully take him down. If he doesn't leave you room to deploy Death Leaper, go for the bushes! In the bushes Death Leaper can't be hit by Conscripts (they'd need a 7+ to hit). Regular Lictors too can then absorb a TON of firepower from the Conscripts. Goad out the Flamers this way and mind-bolt them with Broodlords. Otherwise, hit him on all sides and try to engage as much as possible in one round of combat so he's forced to fall back or otherwise get munched. With the run + charge of Stealers and Broodlords, you should be able to jump past his Rapid Fire range.

Iiiiiinteresting! Thanks! Worth deploying further back in my zone to force him to engage and commit, rather than at the front and pray for a 6 to Seize?

Deploy far enough away that he won't be able to shoot you on his first turn, then unleash everything on them at once. Spread out the red terror, lictors and ravenors around the conscript blob to prevent them from being able to retreat and push the Genestealers in front. Use catalyst on the biggest squad and the horror on the most threatening conscript blob. Use the deathleaper to try to take out Yarrick if possible, once he goes they'all all crumble. Also if you can completely surround a transport with stealers and kill it, the stuff inside can't deploy and is instantly deployed iirc

C4790M wrote:
Deploy far enough away that he won't be able to shoot you on his first turn, then unleash everything on them at once. Spread out the red terror, lictors and ravenors around the conscript blob to prevent them from being able to retreat and push the Genestealers in front. Use catalyst on the biggest squad and the horror on the most threatening conscript blob. Use the deathleaper to try to take out Yarrick if possible, once he goes they'all all crumble. Also if you can completely surround a transport with stealers and kill it, the stuff inside can't deploy and is instantly deployed iirc

Sound tips. Thank you!

TBH I don't know why more people aren't using the NOVA/Chapter approved change to first turn. I feel like almost everyone is using the Obsec for all, and it's literally in the same document. Helps out a ton if you want to try for first turn more reliably.

To the OP: I play CSM and massed conscripts have started showing up in my local meta. When I know I am going to be facing them, I just optimize my list for killing infantry.

Noise Marines, 3x Rapier batteries with Quad Heavy Bolters, etc. Putting infantry in Rhinos and disembarking in a common spot. Bringing a Heldrake to tie up one of the units until I am ready to kill it.

I don't play Tyranids, but I assume there's a way to get a ton of Termigants and Genestealers on the board. Have you considered borrowing some models from other Tyranid players to meet his horde with yours?

 techsoldaten wrote:
To the OP: I play CSM and massed conscripts have started showing up in my local meta. When I know I am going to be facing them, I just optimize my list for killing infantry.

Noise Marines, 3x Rapier batteries with Quad Heavy Bolters, etc. Putting infantry in Rhinos and disembarking in a common spot. Bringing a Heldrake to tie up one of the units until I am ready to kill it.

I don't play Tyranids, but I assume there's a way to get a ton of Termigants and Genestealers on the board. Have you considered borrowing some models from other Tyranid players to meet his horde with yours?

I might have to change list to make the game worth playing. It was supposed to be a Guard patrol gets ambushed opening a campaign. Who sends 129 Conscripts on patrol with a Hero of the Imperium???

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I might have to change list to make the game worth playing. It was supposed to be a Guard patrol gets ambushed opening a campaign. Who sends 129 Conscripts on patrol with a Hero of the Imperium???

The guard. The guard do.



Give it a go with your current list, use the recommendations given, and tell us how it went! Yes, the Tyranids "ambushed" a larger force, but this is because it was a large and disorganized group of Biomass. They did not expect the prey to be so fierce and unified by the presence of a single aging and infirm organism.

 Yarium wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I might have to change list to make the game worth playing. It was supposed to be a Guard patrol gets ambushed opening a campaign. Who sends 129 Conscripts on patrol with a Hero of the Imperium???

The guard. The guard do.



Give it a go with your current list, use the recommendations given, and tell us how it went! Yes, the Tyranids "ambushed" a larger force, but this is because it was a large and disorganized group of Biomass. They did not expect the prey to be so fierce and unified by the presence of a single aging and infirm organism.

Brilliant! I like that narrative! :-D

Just make sure to post here or at least PM the results! I'm honestly very interested to hear how you do.

So we played the Ambush scenario from the BRB. I quickly realised this didn't allow Reserves, so none of my Lictor/Deathleaper traps would work.

Arse

Here's deployment and Sentinel scout move happening. Everything behind the lines of aquarium style trees counts as wooded.



Mistakes were made. Too much deployed too far from the Escape Route edge... that came back to bite me later.

Charlie chose not to try and Seize via Stratagem so I charged in...



Many conscripts died. I used Catalyst to give the first Stealers charging better Survival, and they got in intact. I used a Carnifex to charge the second Conscript blob and the annoying gits stripped two Wounds off him. My other big Stealer unit that lost a few. Then an expensive lot of Tyranids ate a lot on inexpensive Conscripts.

Yarrick's buffs made the Conscripts tedious. However Yarrick and both Officers hopped into a Chimera and buggered off, a Special Weapons squad hopping out to make room. So he lost all Orders and buffs. Phew.



It's ok though, Deathleaper and the Lictors drew fire that missed, or was saved, thanks to their abilities and being in cover.



Man I misdeployed that Carnifex.

The Conscripts all got eaten on Turn 3 but wasted my time eating them, and cause the odd Overwatch wound along the way. One Hellhound burnt up a load of guys. The Russ and Chimeras were either falling back or missing shots due to move penalties, but my low mode count meant I felt every casualty.

The final insult was when I chopped up a Hellhound. Yeah. They have a 4+ to explode. It did. It also detonated the damaged Russ. The Hellhound did D3 Mortal Wounds on every one of my remaining units bar one. The Russ finished off both remaining Broodlords and the Stealers. Arse.

At the end, I had these guys:



...and the Guard had these:



(Guy's in corner embarked, Sentinel one 1W, Chimera closest on 4W)

So it was close. I lost it on positioning as I basically allowed him to drive off. More units in direct path would have been better. I'm sure I had a plan but it didn't work. I came close to preventing his escape but got shot up when the Stealer squad failed to destroy the Chimera and its occupants got out to say hi.

If it had been a regular Maelstrom game I'd have had full use of the Lictors and Deathleaper's abilities, but he'd have played a static gunline and I think I'd have suffered more shooting at full BS (he often moved and fired at Lictors, putting him on 6+ to hit).

Thanks for the tips, they helped, and I'm glad I played the game. Still not sure how a regular Maelstrom game would have gone, but the scenario worked better than I'd imagined.

Oh wow, looks like it was a good game though.

Played that scenario a few weeks back against a Daemons army. Was a real nail biter! The narrative games are surprisingly fun.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Oh wow, looks like it was a good game though.

Played that scenario a few weeks back against a Daemons army. Was a real nail biter! The narrative games are surprisingly fun.

It was very fun and well thought-out! The preliminary bombardment is a cool rule, though spendy on CPs. It affected nothing except the Sentinel for me, which it left on 1 Wound.

Keen to try some more scenarios rather than 'All Maelstrom All The Time' as normal.

How many points was this? Looks like it was fun and a nail biter.

1500 points. Yeah, total nailbiter. Hobbling the Chimera gave me a shot at preventing a Guard win, but the chain reaction exploding vehicles was very 2nd Edition and a hilarious end to things. If the Broodlords had lived then I'd have rinsed one Chimera and it's occupants and secured a victory. Damn Hellhound!!!

You know as a campaign opener this is very climatic. The Imps needed to win here or who would tell the rest of the world that the Tyranids were here. And as you said it was a lucky explosion that could even be spun as the hellhound pilots valiantly sacrificing themselves when all else was lost to save the VIP they were escorting.

Really glad you gave it a shot! You were exceptionally worried, but with starting so close to them, I was almost worried for the Guard! Your opponent was smart to try and bugger off so early. Not sure why you thought you couldn't have Lictors or Raveners "in reserves" because the mission doesn't disallow them, it's just that the game as a whole doesn't allow Reserves unless you have a rule to do so (which Lictors and Raveners both have). If you were to face a similar situation to this again, perhaps considering holding the Raveners or Lictors in Reserves to try and slow down or block his escape route,

Well done regardless! Looks like it was a close match, and those are the best kinds!

Thanks Yarium!

We used Matched Play points but non-Matched Play scenario. The one we chose didn't have Reserves listed, and the preface to that section of the rules says the mission tells you if Reserves can be used. We checked and it didn't appear to be possible for this one, else Lictors and Deathleaper would have popped up in very convenient places! I had a tiiiiny sulk about that then got on with the job.

As it was I deployed farrrrrr too far toward his start zone, and I didn't put enough between him and the escape route, preferring to maximise the turn one charges instead.