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Democratus wrote:Good luck, broodlord Agustus.

Thanks a lot Democratus! I like your avatar.

Kroeger wrote:How pray-tell do you bleed them of faith every round after one? They only need to spend faith if your hitting them with stuff that ignores their armor, they are still 3+ troops.

They are 3+ troops with the toughness of a guardsman. This makes them no harder to kill than marine scouts, which drop like flies to volume of attacks. For Tyranids, volume of attacks in HtH should be par for the course. Not only is it effective in simply killing the Sisters, but it also greatly increases the chance of taking out the Book-bearing sister with the new wound rules.

Do you really have that many AP3 weapons in your army that you can seriously threaten all the squads?

Yes. Yes I do. Chaos excells at low AP. Between inferno bolters, doom sirens, wind of chaos, plasma cannons, melta guns and power weaponry - defeating armor isn't that difficult.

But tyranids have a far more effective way of doing it...forcing the enemy to make LOTS of armor saves. A 3++ isn't any better than a 3+ against 30 genestealer wounds or 40 hormogaunt wounds (both of which nearly guarantee that the squad will loose the veteran superior and the book). With feeder tendrils you really shouldn't be missing that often and you should be wounding with 66% of your hits. Rending is just there to tempt the sisters into burning more faith. On top of this there are a scad of instant-killing blast markers and carnifexes that can fire 8 shots which re-roll hits and wounds AND are also instant-kill against the low toughness sisters.

Is it a cakewalk? No, the game wouldn't be any fun if it were. But I see experienced Tyranid players beat experienced Sisters players on a regular basis (and vice versa). You just have to bring the right tools for the job and play against the sister's main weakness (low toughness). The rest is in the hands of the inscrutable dice gods.

Democratus that sounds really good, but Id like to let you know what happened with the new CC rules when I tried volume of wounds versus sisters.

I was using super gaunts with the initiative, Strength and Grenade upgrades and here is what happened.

I charged into cover with 10 hormaguants thinking Id be OK.

The sisters countere charged in and I swung.

30 attacks
20 hits
14 wounds
3 kills, no critical models died

The sisters swung back

8 attacks (Eviscerator)
5 hits
4 kills

I lost, on the charge, in ods that were not really that far off, albiet a little sister luck. I lost a 5th gaunt because of the outnumber thing and the next turn I was wiped out.

That is with fairly even odds.

Not as easy as it sounds, my other gaunt units were easily destroyed with flamers/bolters popping out of rhinos, most never even charged.

I lost and I lost half my gaunts

The point is, the hormagaunts couldn't even win on the charge, and it cost me all 34 of them to even get that one charge in, and they failed.

Not really because of faith or anything but because of the new CC and morale rules, specifically the counter move which brought all their models in, even though I originally had a position in the old rules which would have left them with no one to strike back, and the double indemnity of the morale rules where every dead guy, costs you another one if you are fearless.

This is why I think the new rules are scary.

I am probably going to take hormaguants out of my army, with a 6+ save they just dont survive even a few counter attack hits from regular squads. Versus marines they would have done even worse becasue of the T.

Yeah certain units simply do not work well in the new rules or are going to have serious issues. All the gaunt flavors are such units, since their numbers do not keep them from being affected by no retreat and they simply do not have the umph in close combat for the points paid.

The ony way I can see gaunts and hormaguants working is when supported by feeder tendril units like lictors or stealers. They then become a bit more dangerous (for instance you woulda had good odds of pushing or even winning that combat had feeder tendrils been nearby).

The good news is No Retreat also effects ork mobs when facing other elite units with lotsa attacks (like say bezerkers).

Augustus:

I think the problem is that you engaged the Sisters with "fairly even odds". You should assault with a 3:1 advantage, and expected to lose 1/3. winterman has a good idea: support those Hormagaunts with Lictors (for the Feeding Tendrils) or Leaping Warriors (for the Synapse), or preferably both! Genestealers: not so much, those work better with Termagants who can hold back and provide cover saves to the expensive Genestealers. Some cheap swarms of Leaping Rippers should help screen the Hormagaunts.

I have actually had some luck pulling synapse away from certain broods just to let them fall back from fights and keep them scoring, or whatnot.

That said, i agree that even odds is a bad scene for gaunts no matter the biomorphs involved.

Nurglitch wrote:Augustus:
I think the problem is that you engaged the Sisters with "fairly even odds". You should assault with a 3:1 advantage,

Certainly, quite right. But understand, units that only work when they have 3:1 odds, typically, aren't very good investments in points.

Augustus:

Who was saying that Hormagaunts only work when they have 3:1 odds? I'm saying that playing 1:1 odds is bad strategy, especially when it's more like 1:3 odds when we factor in the friction your units incurred moving up the table to engage.

The fact is that, to generalize what kirsanth said, 1:1 odds is a bad scene for any unit no matter what.

I'm saying that your problem, such as you describe it, is that you engaged with 1:1 odds when you should engage with a 3:1 advantage regardless of which particular units (and combinations of units) are involved. You engaged in a very risky situation and got your just desert.

It is the case that for strategic objectives to be met, and held, that you must bring 3:1 odds to bear. At 1:1 you'll be lucky (50/50) to win, and very lucky to have any material left over to meet the next objective. At 2:1 your luck will only need to be average to win, but it will need to be better than average to have any material left over to meet the next objective (say, resist counter-attack). At 3:1 you'll only need average luck to capture your objective and be capable of continued operations.

Hormagaunts, obviously, can work if you have 1:1 odds, but it's only (very) lucky if they do win, and you're strategically culpable if they lost (since you gave them the opportunity to be defeated). That fact is that the Hormagaunts weren't the problem, the problem was that you employed them poorly, so left them open to defeat in the face of mild bad luck.

All that for fight at 3:1 odds and deploy better? Ok.

Actually my old Sisters would run out of faith all the time.

Having three heavy bolter retributors is what did it.

Dead, dead, dead. 3 faith. End turn.

Rinse and repeat. lol

Augustus:

Well, it needed spelling out since you failed to understand it the first time. Despite all that you seem to have failed a second time if you think it boils down to "fight at 3:1 odds and deploy better". You fail to comprehend the message about how risk assessment cross-indexes with dictating the initiative, for example. You're missing the forest for the trees.

Flattery will get you nowhere!

Have a nice day!

I'm not flattering you, I'm hoping you'll recognize a neutral tone and accept the constructive criticism I'm offering with something resembling good grace.

Nurglitch wrote:You should assault with a 3:1 advantage...

Nurglitch wrote:Who was saying that Hormagaunts only work when they have 3:1 odds?

You are.

Nurglitch wrote:I'm saying that playing 1:1 odds is bad strategy, ...for strategic objectives to be met, and held, that you must bring 3:1 odds to bear...

Nurglitch wrote:At 3:1 you'll only need average luck to capture your objective...

Why don't you cross reference your own posts. This last bit, is particularly priceless. At 3:1 you will succeed with average luck, ROFL.

I HAD NO IDEA!

Thank god you're here to tell us these things.

First off, 1 to 1 odds with an assault specialized unit charging a generalist or shooty specialized unit, the assault specialized unit SHOULD win the fight.

However, what you had was just bad luck. You should have killed ~5 sisters with the charge, who in turn would have killed 1.7 gaunts (assuming that the eviserator survived)

But the lucky saves and lucky kills added up.

I do agree that outnumbering should count towards combat res. It would make thornback and the space wolf ability to not care about being outnumbered useful still.

Exactly, I think its the missing piece of the CC rules.

.

Augustus, I'll be at Val's at Noon on Saturday. Play me so that you can win and get over your slump and stop being so snarky.

You givin him a "mercy win"? That is very compassionate of you.

Darrian13 wrote:You givin him a "mercy win"? That is very compassionate of you.

No mercy, I just suck.

Ha ha ha, so do I.

Especially with the armies I have right now.

Doh.

Snarky? Caesar is not Snarky,...

Is he?

ConditionOfMan wrote:...win and get over your slump...

Losses are more educational. They also motivate me to create new stuff. Also to intentionally try out new units and strategies in the rules.

Augustus wrote:

ConditionOfMan wrote:...win and get over your slump...

Losses are more educational. They also motivate me to create new stuff. Also to intentionally try out new units and strategies in the rules.

And acquire new dice. ;-)