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Hmmm I suppose the question should now be how do you make this list more resilient/ TAC.

I figure if you can't beat them you may as well join them.

ok so does the Egrub fire multiple times a turn or is it just a single template haywire? What am I missing as to why 5 haywire shots is so deadly (especially if it's torrent which is a max range of 21"). It does not seem like that shoul be enough to reliably kill an AV 13 vehicle with 6 HP and a rerollable 4+ invulnerable?

Pony_law wrote:
ok so does the Egrub fire multiple times a turn or is it just a single template haywire? What am I missing as to why 5 haywire shots is so deadly (especially if it's torrent which is a max range of 21"). It does not seem like that shoul be enough to reliably kill an AV 13 vehicle with 6 HP and a rerollable 4+ invulnerable?

You're also not factoring in vector strikes, or the possibility of rolling pens on the haywire. If you have any idea what you're doing with the Tyrants, you'll have a maximum of 2 tyrants per side. So 2 4+ saves, and 3 that just go through. Also, if your opponent is running Ad. Lance you are getting at least 2 HP from two different IK's a turn if they don't break formation.

Also, the tyrants guns are S6. So on top of the haywire you have 30 more shots to try and glance side/rear armor. Between all of that, downing an IK a turn with Tyrants isn't really a stretch

 Dash2021 wrote:

Pony_law wrote:
ok so does the Egrub fire multiple times a turn or is it just a single template haywire? What am I missing as to why 5 haywire shots is so deadly (especially if it's torrent which is a max range of 21"). It does not seem like that shoul be enough to reliably kill an AV 13 vehicle with 6 HP and a rerollable 4+ invulnerable?

You're also not factoring in vector strikes, or the possibility of rolling pens on the haywire. If you have any idea what you're doing with the Tyrants, you'll have a maximum of 2 tyrants per side. So 2 4+ saves, and 3 that just go through. Also, if your opponent is running Ad. Lance you are getting at least 2 HP from two different IK's a turn if they don't break formation.

Also, the tyrants guns are S6. So on top of the haywire you have 30 more shots to try and glance side/rear armor. Between all of that, downing an IK a turn with Tyrants isn't really a stretch

This exactly. It's very easy for Flyrants to get on multiple sides of a Knight, and in range of multiple knights, in order to make you pick a side to put a shield up and then ignore it by shooting a different unit while the three other Flyrants strip of Hull Points.

 tetrisphreak wrote:
I find it odd that your area bans the VSG - it's a purely defensive upgrade, it kills nothing and can be outwitted by fast armies, drop pods, etc.

Lots of areas ban the VSG due to the goofiness of its' rules wording. The VSG shield is triggered by firing at a "unit" that is within range of the VSG; that means a single model, in the very back, is enough for a unit to be protected by the VSG shields even if 99% of the unit is far outside of it.

You could, hypothetically, take 100 Guardsmen and spread them all out where only a couple guys from each unit are in range of the VSG, covering wide swaths of the board nowhere near the VSG itself, yet still being protected by it.

Or you could realistically look at the Renegade Open, where a list doing exactly this won.

tag8833 wrote:

Also this list is usually going to lose in maelstrom games. Very few people play Maelstrom competitively, but

[...]

My guess is that you get 1 point from your rippers, and 2 from your Lictors, and probably 1 or 2 from you Mawloc, Most likely 2 or so for the cards above, so you are looking at a score of about 7 going into turn 4-5 when you feel comfortable enough to start landing flyrants. A good Maelstrom list can do 10-14 during that time, but you have a good chance of tabling them, and you might be able to deny them enough to win the game, or just get lucky with your draws. So it isn't auto lose. I was definitely overstating the case by saying "usually going to lose", but it is definitely less optimized than a list with 3 flyrants and 2 Dakkafexes in pods.

Don't forget as well--anyone who has tested straight-Maelstrom (or Adepticon-Maelstrom) will tell you how important card generation itself is.

You essentially have a "hand size" in Maelstrom; a cap on the number of cards you can hold. Scoring missions early is incredibly important, as it empties your hand and allows you to draw more cards, and literally opens you up to having a higher scoring possibility than your opponent.

Saying you have 5 cards, and your opponent has 5 cards, and you'll just score all 5 on Turn 4 once the game has turned in your favor is meaningless if your opponent scored 2 on turn 1, and then 3 on turn 2, and then 2 on turn 4 while you just held onto yours. You don't really have 5 cards to his 5 cards; you have 5 cards to his 12 cards.

Then there's the real wrench-in-the-gears mission (from both the main rulebook and Adepticon's primers), wherein you only generate cards based on holding objectives at the start of the turn. That is the true nightmare mission for a list like this, as well as any other list with no staying power (on the ground) that expects to be able to leap in and grab objectives with paper-thin units who are then expected to die. If you can't hold ground and maintain positioning for a turn, you will not receive mission cards at all.

I honestly believe that BAO's "Maelstrom" format is throwing people off of what real Maelstrom actually looks like.

 Dash2021 wrote:

Pony_law wrote:
ok so does the Egrub fire multiple times a turn or is it just a single template haywire? What am I missing as to why 5 haywire shots is so deadly (especially if it's torrent which is a max range of 21"). It does not seem like that shoul be enough to reliably kill an AV 13 vehicle with 6 HP and a rerollable 4+ invulnerable?

You're also not factoring in vector strikes, or the possibility of rolling pens on the haywire. If you have any idea what you're doing with the Tyrants, you'll have a maximum of 2 tyrants per side. So 2 4+ saves, and 3 that just go through. Also, if your opponent is running Ad. Lance you are getting at least 2 HP from two different IK's a turn if they don't break formation.

Also, the tyrants guns are S6. So on top of the haywire you have 30 more shots to try and glance side/rear armor. Between all of that, downing an IK a turn with Tyrants isn't really a stretch

A few notes. A Tyrant is never going to vector strike a knight. You need a 6 to glance it, and you give up shooting a weapon. Vector striking knights is reserved to crones.

Also, Haywire pens do not affect a knight, because now you have to roll a 7 on a D6 for a pen result, and haywire give you no bonus.

However, Tyrants do have method to deal with Knights. #1 is to shoot 12 TL BS4 shots at side or rear. 1.83 hull points per turn.

#2 is a random psychic power. Warp Lance is S10 AP:2 Lance. Each tyrant has a 37% chance of rolling it. Because it happens in the psychic phase, it can be directed against an unshielded side without the knight player having any recourse.

Coupled with the Tyrants ability to move 24" a turn, you should be expecting each tyrant to do about 2 Hull points a turn to an imperial Knight.

The haywire flamer is mainly for scenarios where you can get multiple knights at a time with it, and to threaten a knight who might attempt to charge a downed tyrant.

DJ3 wrote:

 tetrisphreak wrote:
I find it odd that your area bans the VSG - it's a purely defensive upgrade, it kills nothing and can be outwitted by fast armies, drop pods, etc.

Lots of areas ban the VSG due to the goofiness of its' rules wording. The VSG shield is triggered by firing at a "unit" that is within range of the VSG; that means a single model, in the very back, is enough for a unit to be protected by the VSG shields even if 99% of the unit is far outside of it.

You could, hypothetically, take 100 Guardsmen and spread them all out where only a couple guys from each unit are in range of the VSG, covering wide swaths of the board nowhere near the VSG itself, yet still being protected by it.

Or you could realistically look at the Renegade Open, where a list doing exactly this won.

[quote=tag8833 625933 7415634

My point is it's counter intuitive to allow lords of war, but ban a defensive upgrade like a VSG. it's rules allowing you to spread units back and claim protection helps melee focused armies like tyranids in a shooty edition. What's more, in a typical competitive setting where players expect to see knights and LOW units, busting 3 av12 walls should be cake. It's just an extra layer of armor, it's not jetseer, or cent star, or riptide spam, or serpent spam (which nobody organizing tournaments seems to have had problems allowing).

So if the purpose of this bat rep is a public service then can you please expand on ways to defeat the list?

Tactics/Strategies?

Any armies besides crons and tau that can take it on? Personally I think Daemon FMC would be good. Nurgle gets 2+ cover and Tzeentch doesn't care about your shadows and can potentially get 2+ rerollable cover with shrouding.

While the pentyrant list is absolutely bonkers, I don't think I'll be using it. I still only own 2 flyrants and I'll keep it that way. I don't play in tournaments and my friends play casually for the most part.

 tetrisphreak wrote:

DJ3 wrote:

 tetrisphreak wrote:
I find it odd that your area bans the VSG - it's a purely defensive upgrade, it kills nothing and can be outwitted by fast armies, drop pods, etc.

Lots of areas ban the VSG due to the goofiness of its' rules wording. The VSG shield is triggered by firing at a "unit" that is within range of the VSG; that means a single model, in the very back, is enough for a unit to be protected by the VSG shields even if 99% of the unit is far outside of it.

You could, hypothetically, take 100 Guardsmen and spread them all out where only a couple guys from each unit are in range of the VSG, covering wide swaths of the board nowhere near the VSG itself, yet still being protected by it.

Or you could realistically look at the Renegade Open, where a list doing exactly this won.

[quote=tag8833 625933 7415634

My point is it's counter intuitive to allow lords of war, but ban a defensive upgrade like a VSG. it's rules allowing you to spread units back and claim protection helps melee focused armies like tyranids in a shooty edition. What's more, in a typical competitive setting where players expect to see knights and LOW units, busting 3 av12 walls should be cake. It's just an extra layer of armor, it's not jetseer, or cent star, or riptide spam, or serpent spam (which nobody organizing tournaments seems to have had problems allowing).

My area doesn't typically ban the VSG, this specific event does. It also doesn't allow Lords of War.

Anyone who buys 5 flyrants should expect to have 3 wasted models when the rules update again. Extreme lists are generally just gimicks.

I still don't see how that list is so great. MSU is the best strategy to win in 7th, that list wastes too many points on models that can't score when if they want to be useful.

Calgar plus 60 marines in transports laughs at this pretty hard actually. Especially when playing the normal maelstrom missions. Those frontline missions are terrible (edit: they weren't bad when they first implemented them as a stop gap but are now poor), the fact that you get to go second and prevent objectives scoring buy killing units coupled with WAY too many kill a unit results is the only reason why it looks so good.

While I appreciate the fact they tried to streamline the maelstrom cards, there are much better ways to do it then their way IMHO. All they had to do was allow discarding cards that are impossible to get. They stripped it down too much which makes it too easy to exploit. The biggest foul they made was scoring the objects at the bottom of the game turn, it basically continued the trend where tournament 40k is all about going second (and also getting last turn do to time).

I had to chuckle about this being a public service announcement.

"This just in: blocking bullets with face is bad for health!"

I will say that it is rather stupid to even bother limiting detachments at this point, the artificial cap is just making certain armies way too good, I'd rather see more variety come from more sources.

corpsethief claw
dark artisan
razorwings
autarch
da /w WS

as a core. 5 flyrants shooting at Claw are only putting 1.5 wounds on it per turn. Need 10 rounds of shooting to kill it. Razorwings come on turn 2 and either kill one flyrant or force it to jink. Nid player forced to either deal with Razorwings or pick away at corpsethief.

Dark Artisan unit, Wave serpent and whatever other DE units are on the field merc all ground opposition and capture objectives with impunity while corpsethief and razorwings soak up all Flyrant attention.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
corpsethief claw
dark artisan
razorwings
autarch
da /w WS

as a core. 5 flyrants shooting at Claw are only putting 1.5 wounds on it per turn. Need 10 rounds of shooting to kill it. Razorwings come on turn 2 and either kill one flyrant or force it to jink. Nid player forced to either deal with Razorwings or pick away at corpsethief.

Dark Artisan unit, Wave serpent and whatever other DE units are on the field merc all ground opposition and capture objectives with impunity while corpsethief and razorwings soak up all Flyrant attention.

Which would be legal according to the rules but illegal due to bullgak tourny comp. The 2 detachment restriction just lets a select few codices exploit to rules rather then giving everyone an equal opportunity to.

The strength of this nid list is in dominating air.

Most air units have AV 10, Str6 lotsa twin linked - shots equals dead AV 10 things.

Stormtalons were a bad matchup against this list, they are at best okay anti air, but not that great against FMC.

Placing a void shield generator very far up with the stormtalons in it might have been more useful, but even still 4 storm talons is what 500pts? versus how many points of tyrants? 1k+? did anyone expect the storm talons to win?

its a fairly uneven matchup just on the points.

essentially the list is an air deathstar, and needs things that can eliminate air units, or ignore its firepower to counter it.

8 stormtalons with a VSG deployed far up would be more of an even fight.

or 4 stormtalons and 3crimson hunters.

the other option is MSU.

HT put out a lot of shots with twin linked dev with brain leach, but its AP -. So yeah you score 10-11 hits per HT which is about 9 wounds versus toughness 4, but thats only going to remove 3 guys with a 3+ or 4-5 guys with a 4+. per set of devourers w/brain leech.


The Tyrants are great because most metas play with expensive models with low model counts, so lots of S6 AP- shooting is great, its also great at trashing AV 12 or less due to lots of glances/pens(11 / 10 AV). But other things, not so much.

this battle does highlight how powerful 5 tyrants can be, but it really highlights how RPS 40k can be, and ultimately how bad it is to actually bring a LoW. The points on the LoW could have been spent elsewhere and been more useful to the objectives the player needed to compete for.

Things that ignore flying would be useful of course, like purifiers nova ability.

an army that had fortifications/vehicles with AV 13+ would be useful, as it could ignore all of the nid shooting for a few turns.

Horde armies with any decent armor save/cover save and FnP with toughness 4+ so they could actually roll FnP versus twin dev w/ brain leech would be tough.

@blacktoof

It's only 0-6 storm talons in this formation. As for vehicles with 13/14 armour values, electro shock grubs would eventually take them out of the equation.

In my opinion the best way of taking out 5 tyrants is by allying Necrons and taking a unit of sentry pylons with the focused death ray + Obyron. Youre hitting them automatically and denying them Jink.

This was a fun report, I would like to have seen GTA go second and play a more patient game. It sure seemed like he ran his entire army up in order to try to push through a VSG and a 2+ cover save, that seems like a waste of effort and put him in a position where JY2 was able to take off the tyrant swarm without fear of reprisal. Stormtalons can not endure that kind of fire power.

But i also know this was a playtest game as well, strategies are tested in playtest games, you don't expect a flawless game at this point. I would expect in the rematch, GTA would be less likely to fly those talons into the teeth of the beast.

As a tyranid player i have found that the way my opponents can best deal with them is to split fire across the front of tyrants, trying to force as many as possible to take grounding tests. if your force of 3-4 tyrants all the sudden all have 2 wounds each on them you are forced to make a decision, do you continue to press your attack or do you start worrying more about preserving your tyrants.

I am of course fairly new to the tourney thing (only 2 GTs under my belt so far) so i have alot to learn myself!

I know its only 0-6 in that formation however the nid player took 4 of the 6, or only 66% of allowed., but the eldar portion of the army could have contained anti air as well, and did not.

The eldar/sm list just didn't seen very tuned, and the the nid list is very tuned but only in 1 direction.

ultimately one player has 1200pts of air units, the other has 500.

Its just an uneven matchup.

the nid list is very powerful, because the HTs can threaten a lot of things, and most lists have to either have an air or anti air focus to counter it, or be builds that you do not normally see at the top tables in the medium rounds or higher in a tournament.

yeah the egrubs can eat armor eventually, but the HTs would have to close in on a target en masse to really take something out in 1 turn, which would be outside of their VSG network most likely.

usually you can count on snapshooting Wave Serpents for your normal anti-air needs. So for the Eldar player trying to make a TAC list and not catering it to face 5 tyrants, it actually has quite a bit of anti-air.

I agree it has a bit of anti air, but the other list is mostly air.

however in this case one army is 1235 pts of air units- the nids.

the 2 wave serpents and 4 talons is about 800pts of units that can pull anti air, none of them ignore armor.

so you have anti air thats geared towards AV10 non FMC units, since FMC tend to have armor saves, and almost none of the air units can ignore armor better than 4, and at that one has 50% more points in air than the other....

If any army brought 2/3rds of their army as air units that start on the table, you would have a hard time dealing with them unless you had a large investment in anti air things.

so yes as a TAC all comers list it does, but it came up against a list thats not really a TAC list, its tailored to be fighting small elite armies that have little to medium anti air or air units themselves.

This is a rock paper scissors list, the really nice thing about it is the counters to it, are pretty rare or builds that are not considered highly competitive themselves usually.

valid points, although I think the tyrant spam has a place as a counter to the knight based meta. At least the one that I saw at the Renegade Open.

There was a guy at Renegade who ran 10 flyers but i think he had the misfortune of going up against a skyfire heavy tau list which put him out of the running early.

The list is definitely a PRS attempt at the meta while also highlighting the fact that the hive tyrant stands above all other tyranid units.

I completely agree with all your statements.

I think knights still have some advantages over the pentyrant list.

They can hold still on objectives, the nids need to keep flying, unless they want to be targets for assault by going into jump mode.

The best way the nids have to kill the knights, egrubs, puts them in danger of D explosions.

Would be interesting to see how it played against a all knight list, since the knights usually have little AA, other than the one knight that gets IIRC 8 shots at S7 ap 2?

Even still a pure knight list, or mostly knight list would struggle and rely on luck to ground a tyrant to try and put wounds onto it most of the time.

The nids on the other hand would have to try and strip off armor from vector strikes/shooting. twin linked brain devs from 5 tyrants will get about 50 hits a round, or about 8 glances, half of which will be saved from ion shields. On average, you are looking at killing a knight and a half of turn if you can bring all the tyrants to bear on them from non egrub shooting.

If the player takes two adamantine lances, it would be hard to put any damage on the knights with just the massed S6 shots.

I really dislike knights. Wish they cost 100 more each, even then they would still be good.

 iddy00711 wrote:
Hmmm I suppose the question should now be how do you make this list more resilient/ TAC.

I figure if you can't beat them you may as well join them.

Are you talking about making the Eldar list or the Tyranids list more resilient/TAC?

The Tyranid list is already a TAC list and it is resilient enough. My combination of MSU, denial strategy and all-reserves for my support units is what helps to make them "resilient".

As for the Eldar army, it is TAC and it is fairly resilient to many armies. But what it will have problems against is volume-of-fire from units with skyfire like my pentyrants. That's its one kryptonite.

DJ3 wrote:

 tetrisphreak wrote:
I find it odd that your area bans the VSG - it's a purely defensive upgrade, it kills nothing and can be outwitted by fast armies, drop pods, etc.

Lots of areas ban the VSG due to the goofiness of its' rules wording. The VSG shield is triggered by firing at a "unit" that is within range of the VSG; that means a single model, in the very back, is enough for a unit to be protected by the VSG shields even if 99% of the unit is far outside of it.

You could, hypothetically, take 100 Guardsmen and spread them all out where only a couple guys from each unit are in range of the VSG, covering wide swaths of the board nowhere near the VSG itself, yet still being protected by it.

Or you could realistically look at the Renegade Open, where a list doing exactly this won.

The VSG could definitely use some FAQ'ing (haha....like that will ever happen).

DJ3 wrote:

Don't forget as well--anyone who has tested straight-Maelstrom (or Adepticon-Maelstrom) will tell you how important card generation itself is.

You essentially have a "hand size" in Maelstrom; a cap on the number of cards you can hold. Scoring missions early is incredibly important, as it empties your hand and allows you to draw more cards, and literally opens you up to having a higher scoring possibility than your opponent.

Saying you have 5 cards, and your opponent has 5 cards, and you'll just score all 5 on Turn 4 once the game has turned in your favor is meaningless if your opponent scored 2 on turn 1, and then 3 on turn 2, and then 2 on turn 4 while you just held onto yours. You don't really have 5 cards to his 5 cards; you have 5 cards to his 12 cards.

Then there's the real wrench-in-the-gears mission (from both the main rulebook and Adepticon's primers), wherein you only generate cards based on holding objectives at the start of the turn. That is the true nightmare mission for a list like this, as well as any other list with no staying power (on the ground) that expects to be able to leap in and grab objectives with paper-thin units who are then expected to die. If you can't hold ground and maintain positioning for a turn, you will not receive mission cards at all.

I honestly believe that BAO's "Maelstrom" format is throwing people off of what real Maelstrom actually looks like.

To be fair, pure Maelstrom is not conducive to tournament play. Then you have situations where one can win just because of the cards he gets as opposed to actually outplaying the opponent. That is why very few tournaments actually use pure Maelstrom missions. Most use a hybrid or modified version of it. This also reduces the amount of bookkeeping you need to make in a environment which is also time-sensitive (i.e. tournament games).

Budzerker wrote:
So if the purpose of this bat rep is a public service then can you please expand on ways to defeat the list?

Tactics/Strategies?

Any armies besides crons and tau that can take it on? Personally I think Daemon FMC would be good. Nurgle gets 2+ cover and Tzeentch doesn't care about your shadows and can potentially get 2+ rerollable cover with shrouding.

There's a difference between a public service announcement (hey, the new Tyranids are really nasty!) and an actual tactica, of which this is not.

But I will give a brief overview on what you need to deal against this type of list.

1. Strong anti-air. Anti-air is no longer just an afterthought. Your tournament list needs to have very strong anti-air in order to deal with this type of list.

2. A very strong ground presence. To survive its firepower, you need to have resiliency on the ground. MSU is one way to go. Another is just to have lots of bodies in the ground, with decent saves (i.e. 3+ MEQ, 4+ in cover, FNP, AV13-spam, etc.).

3. Go after the non-flying units of the Tyrand army. They will go after yours. You need to go after theirs. If you can't deal with the flyrants, then kill everything else on the ground.

Daemons will give Tyranids a fight because they can satisfy #2 with Daemon Summoning. However, tyranids will give daemons a tough fight because they have a huge advantage with their shooting.

 jy2 wrote:
To be fair, pure Maelstrom is not conducive to tournament play. Then you have situations where one can win just because of the cards he gets as opposed to actually outplaying the opponent. That is why very few tournaments actually use pure Maelstrom missions. Most use a hybrid or modified version of it. This also reduces the amount of bookkeeping you need to make in a environment which is also time-sensitive (i.e. tournament games).

I think it would be interesting for you to try out a tourney running Maelstrom. RTTs running Maelstrom are sprouting up all over the place in the midwest (and probably other places as well). They have a much lower bookkeeping requirement than most other tourney missions (Ever played a NOVA mission?), and the randomness where a lucky draw overcomes superior play is a silly myth born of bad attempted adaptions of Maelstrom to competitive play (BAO #3), naivety, or fear of the unknown. I've had Maelstrom games where a dice roll or a Card Draw determine the final outcome, but far fewer than Eternal war games. By adding more opportunities to score you reduce the effect of randomness rather than increase it.

 shamroll wrote:
While the pentyrant list is absolutely bonkers, I don't think I'll be using it. I still only own 2 flyrants and I'll keep it that way. I don't play in tournaments and my friends play casually for the most part.

Yeah, if you and your group aren't into competitive gaming, then don't even worry about it. In casual play, 2 flyrants is all you'll ever need.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Anyone who buys 5 flyrants should expect to have 3 wasted models when the rules update again. Extreme lists are generally just gimicks.

I still don't see how that list is so great. MSU is the best strategy to win in 7th, that list wastes too many points on models that can't score when if they want to be useful.

Calgar plus 60 marines in transports laughs at this pretty hard actually. Especially when playing the normal maelstrom missions. Those frontline missions are terrible (edit: they weren't bad when they first implemented them as a stop gap but are now poor), the fact that you get to go second and prevent objectives scoring buy killing units coupled with WAY too many kill a unit results is the only reason why it looks so good.

While I appreciate the fact they tried to streamline the maelstrom cards, there are much better ways to do it then their way IMHO. All they had to do was allow discarding cards that are impossible to get. They stripped it down too much which makes it too easy to exploit. The biggest foul they made was scoring the objects at the bottom of the game turn, it basically continued the trend where tournament 40k is all about going second (and also getting last turn do to time).

I had to chuckle about this being a public service announcement.

"This just in: blocking bullets with face is bad for health!"

I will say that it is rather stupid to even bother limiting detachments at this point, the artificial cap is just making certain armies way too good, I'd rather see more variety come from more sources.

Honestly, not many lists are going to beat a 60 drop pod marine list in Maelstrom scenarios. That type of list is also another "extreme" list. While pentyrants may be king-of-the-air, 60 marines in pods are king-of-the-ObSec. However, I'd like to see the marine list beat the flyrant one in a pure Eternal War mission.

One of the things I like about a 2-tier mission format (like the BAO) is that you have other ways to win, especially if you come up against a mission that is bad for you. Good luck trying to get a deathstar army off of the Relic, or have fun playing against 60 drop pod marines in pure Maelstrom missions. The 2-tier system tries to balance out these inequities and will give armies in what is normally a bad matchup for them at least a fighting chance to still do something with the game (such as MSU in pure VP missions or Skyblight in Scouring missions, where they are already playing with a huge handicap). And while systems like the BAO isn't perfect, to me, it is still better than a straight-up pure Eternal Warrior or pure Maelstrom mission, at least for competitive play.

Say what you will about BAO Maelstrom objectives, in terms of managing in tournament play, simple = better. You really don't want people to roll and then re-roll for mission objectives. Few objectives where everyone can achieve on about an equal footing is much, much better than many objectives where some of the objectives are hard to achieve for some armies (for example, having to kill an enemy close combat for an army with no close-combat units, or having to kill a flyer for an army with hardly any anti-air). Then you go into the realm where winning isn't determined by the player but rather, by the objectives he draws.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
corpsethief claw
dark artisan
razorwings
autarch
da /w WS

as a core. 5 flyrants shooting at Claw are only putting 1.5 wounds on it per turn. Need 10 rounds of shooting to kill it. Razorwings come on turn 2 and either kill one flyrant or force it to jink. Nid player forced to either deal with Razorwings or pick away at corpsethief.

Dark Artisan unit, Wave serpent and whatever other DE units are on the field merc all ground opposition and capture objectives with impunity while corpsethief and razorwings soak up all Flyrant attention.

More allowable sources/detachments open up to more combos for exploitation. At least that is one of the lessons we can learn from the past (Adepticon last year, where about 1/2 of the final 16 players brought in Inquisition allies in addition to their regular allies). But who knows, the tournament meta may be trending in this direction anyways.

 Red Corsair wrote:

Which would be legal according to the rules but illegal due to bullgak tourny comp. The 2 detachment restriction just lets a select few codices exploit to rules rather then giving everyone an equal opportunity to.

Allowing for more than 2 sources also allows for more avenues for abuse, as it creates for even more combos. You're going to throw balance more out-of-whack than it already is when you allow for multiple/unlimited sources/detachments. Less detachments = more balancing. I actually long for the days of 5th edition when there wasn't even any allies at all! You want game balance without any comp necessary? Throw out allies, throw out formations and go back to the 40K stone ages.

 iddy00711 wrote:
@blacktoof

It's only 0-6 storm talons in this formation. As for vehicles with 13/14 armour values, electro shock grubs would eventually take them out of the equation.

In my opinion the best way of taking out 5 tyrants is by allying Necrons and taking a unit of sentry pylons with the focused death ray + Obyron. Youre hitting them automatically and denying them Jink.

Sentry pylons can't hit flyers when they're in the air. Don't even try to argue that in competitive play.

BeeCee wrote:
This was a fun report, I would like to have seen GTA go second and play a more patient game. It sure seemed like he ran his entire army up in order to try to push through a VSG and a 2+ cover save, that seems like a waste of effort and put him in a position where JY2 was able to take off the tyrant swarm without fear of reprisal. Stormtalons can not endure that kind of fire power.

But i also know this was a playtest game as well, strategies are tested in playtest games, you don't expect a flawless game at this point. I would expect in the rematch, GTA would be less likely to fly those talons into the teeth of the beast.

As a tyranid player i have found that the way my opponents can best deal with them is to split fire across the front of tyrants, trying to force as many as possible to take grounding tests. if your force of 3-4 tyrants all the sudden all have 2 wounds each on them you are forced to make a decision, do you continue to press your attack or do you start worrying more about preserving your tyrants.

I am of course fairly new to the tourney thing (only 2 GTs under my belt so far) so i have alot to learn myself!

Agreed. This game was purely experimental, not just with lists but with tactics as well. I mean, how will you know if you don't try it? In any case, better to test it out here than to find out in a tournament. It is also usually in these practice games where I do things I won't normally do. Because if I fail, there are no repercussions. It's only practice.

blaktoof wrote:
I know its only 0-6 in that formation however the nid player took 4 of the 6, or only 66% of allowed., but the eldar portion of the army could have contained anti air as well, and did not.

The eldar/sm list just didn't seen very tuned, and the the nid list is very tuned but only in 1 direction.

ultimately one player has 1200pts of air units, the other has 500.

Its just an uneven matchup.

the nid list is very powerful, because the HTs can threaten a lot of things, and most lists have to either have an air or anti air focus to counter it, or be builds that you do not normally see at the top tables in the medium rounds or higher in a tournament.

yeah the egrubs can eat armor eventually, but the HTs would have to close in on a target en masse to really take something out in 1 turn, which would be outside of their VSG network most likely.

Don't mistake not being "tuned" to tailoring. Pentyrant is just a army-mismatch for most armies. Grant actually beat a very capable Tyranid player running 3 flyrants and a barbed hierodule (and he did it twice) before playing against me. His new list is actually a good TAC list.

My pentyrant list, on the other hand, is what I call a anti-meta list. It breaks the mold in that it can ignore a lot of the elements of a typical TAC list. You take a lot of good, tournament-successful TAC lists and I guarantee you that I can steamroll over many of them. That's why this type of list is a meta-changing list. It's a good TAC list which goes against the current meta, and it is so good that it will force the meta to change in order to deal with it. You are right in that it is an uneven matchup, but that is just how it's going to be with a Pentyrant build against most armies.

BeeCee wrote:
usually you can count on snapshooting Wave Serpents for your normal anti-air needs. So for the Eldar player trying to make a TAC list and not catering it to face 5 tyrants, it actually has quite a bit of anti-air.

This list has probably the most anti-air of any Eldar list that I have faced before. Eldar is not traditionally known for their AA, but this one is actually really good against air targets. But still, it had problems against my list. Now that should tell you something about how resilient my list actually is and why it would be a nightmare for most armies to go up against.

blaktoof wrote:

This is a rock paper scissors list, the really nice thing about it is the counters to it, are pretty rare or builds that are not considered highly competitive themselves usually.

I think you give it too little credit. It isn't a RPS list. It's an anti-meta list which happens to also be a very, very good TAC list. I guarantee you, there are no true hard-counters to it. Tau will fare better against it than most other armies, but Tau is not an absolute counter to it. As a matter of fact, I almost consider the 2 matchups as equals instead of a Tau-dominating-Tyranids type of matchup.

tag8833 wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
To be fair, pure Maelstrom is not conducive to tournament play. Then you have situations where one can win just because of the cards he gets as opposed to actually outplaying the opponent. That is why very few tournaments actually use pure Maelstrom missions. Most use a hybrid or modified version of it. This also reduces the amount of bookkeeping you need to make in a environment which is also time-sensitive (i.e. tournament games).

I think it would be interesting for you to try out a tourney running Maelstrom. RTTs running Maelstrom are sprouting up all over the place in the midwest (and probably other places as well). They have a much lower bookkeeping requirement than most other tourney missions (Ever played a NOVA mission?), and the randomness where a lucky draw overcomes superior play is a silly myth born of bad attempted adaptions of Maelstrom to competitive play (BAO #3), naivety, or fear of the unknown. I've had Maelstrom games where a dice roll or a Card Draw determine the final outcome, but far fewer than Eternal war games. By adding more opportunities to score you reduce the effect of randomness rather than increase it.

Sorry, but I don't know of any tourneys in my area that runs pure Maelstrom. But the info does not have to come from a tournament. Just play a regular game of Maelstrom to get the info that you want.

And you don't need ME to test it out. I am not the one who needs persuading. I think YOU should try out my list yourself in a Maelstrom game. Play it against the best Maelstrom player/army in your meta and see how it fares.

tag8833 wrote:

 jy2 wrote:
To be fair, pure Maelstrom is not conducive to tournament play. Then you have situations where one can win just because of the cards he gets as opposed to actually outplaying the opponent. That is why very few tournaments actually use pure Maelstrom missions. Most use a hybrid or modified version of it. This also reduces the amount of bookkeeping you need to make in a environment which is also time-sensitive (i.e. tournament games).

I think it would be interesting for you to try out a tourney running Maelstrom. RTTs running Maelstrom are sprouting up all over the place in the midwest (and probably other places as well). They have a much lower bookkeeping requirement than most other tourney missions (Ever played a NOVA mission?), and the randomness where a lucky draw overcomes superior play is a silly myth born of bad attempted adaptions of Maelstrom to competitive play (BAO #3), naivety, or fear of the unknown. I've had Maelstrom games where a dice roll or a Card Draw determine the final outcome, but far fewer than Eternal war games. By adding more opportunities to score you reduce the effect of randomness rather than increase it.

Yea I always have to raise an eye brow when someone uses terminology like "most tournaments."
Sorry jy2 but you can't know what most tournaments as a whole are running, and in your defense nor would anyone expect you to. In the North east most RTT's I have attended also run maelstrom from the cards and have simpler changes then frontlines. For example allowing players to discard and redraw cards that are impossible to achieve.

Guess what? The games are incredibly tactical and fair and there doesn't need to be anymore book keeping then rolling for random generations each player turn.

The actual maelstrom format also reduces the loopholes tournies get where you always want bottom of turn and can slow play the last few turns to win. Sorry but when your opponent can score 3-5 points turn one you really have it in your best interest to score early as well as late rather then the same crappy trend that has been grand tournament 40k for the last two cycles (5th and 6th).

I have to reiterate how absolutely stupid the BAO format is for making maelstrom scoring happen at the bottom of the turn only and for making so many results KP's. It literally allows lists like this one to function way better then they normally would.

TLDR: You'd be surprised what most tournaments are actually running. Please don't assume your neck of the woods is the only way or the right way. You would actually be quite surprised.


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 jy2 wrote:

One of the things I like about a 2-tier mission format (like the BAO) is that you have other ways to win, especially if you come up against a mission that is bad for you. Good luck trying to get a deathstar army off of the Relic, or have fun playing against 60 drop pod marines in pure Maelstrom missions. The 2-tier system tries to balance out these inequities and will give armies in what is normally a bad matchup for them at least a fighting chance to still do something with the game (such as MSU in pure VP missions or Skyblight in Scouring missions, where they are already playing with a huge handicap). And while systems like the BAO isn't perfect, to me, it is still better than a straight-up pure Eternal Warrior or pure Maelstrom mission, at least for competitive play.

Say what you will about BAO Maelstrom objectives, in terms of managing in tournament play, simple = better. You really don't want people to roll and then re-roll for mission objectives. Few objectives where everyone can achieve on about an equal footing is much, much better than many objectives where some of the objectives are hard to achieve for some armies (for example, having to kill an enemy close combat for an army with no close-combat units, or having to kill a flyer for an army with hardly any anti-air). Then you go into the realm where winning isn't determined by the player but rather, by the objectives he draws.

See this is when I question whether you have played many RTT's using the actual maelstrom missions, because when you allow a player to toss impossible cards and have a battle forged list rolling with its re-roll on the tactical warlord traits table, the scenarios you just listed are not nearly the issue you trying to make it out to be.

The BAO maelstrom format is not without its issues though, and the frontline guys actually don't remedy there missions often enough. You can't seriously tell me that after the BAO they had a perfect system in place and nothing could be improved, yet the appear to be content with leabving the missions be. I do really like that they have two ways to win though, this is the best part of their format, though I think they should alternate between primary and secondary. By that I mean its lazy that they always have the maelstrom side secondary and thus worth less points, alternating would be such an easy fix. As for their take on maelstrom? I appreciate simple things but this is way to simple. Actually it's modified to the point where I question that they even have the right to call it maelstrom. Asymmetrical mission format? Sure. Maelstrom? Not anymore.

As for the book keeping and making the cards more simple (reducing some of the more fringe ones like killing gun emplacements) I have seen vista print/word used to make cheap and clear to read decks of mission cards, no need for players to be rolling at all, just charge them for a cheapy deck or put it in their swag bag.

 jy2 wrote:

Allowing for more than 2 sources also allows for more avenues for abuse, as it creates for even more combos. You're going to throw balance more out-of-whack than it already is when you allow for multiple/unlimited sources/detachments. Less detachments = more balancing. I actually long for the days of 5th edition when there wasn't even any allies at all! You want game balance without any comp necessary? Throw out allies, throw out formations and go back to the 40K stone ages.

I never even mentions sources. I am aware that 40k requires at least SOME form of comp to play competitively, which is exactly why I was referring to detachments not sources. While I think unlimited sources is much, I also think 2 is way too restrictive and places little no faith or trust in the community in attendance at all.

I will definitely agree with you in referrence to wanting simpler 40k back. But I think you either say one source no self allying or you trust the player base and let them use the system with as few restrictions as possible. 2 sources is not that route.


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BTW you ARE on the inside with Reece now as a team 0 comp member, maybe you can help make a tighter format

Fair enough. I don't know what most of the smaller tournaments, the RTT's, are running. But I do know that most of the larger tournaments in the West Coast, the GT's, follow the BAO format.

Pure Maelstrom, while I admit is pretty fun, has its own fair share of problems as well.

1. Winning the game can oftentimes be a result of drawing the right objectives as opposed to actually beating your opponent tactically.

2. It becomes a game not of beating your opponent, but of mainly grabbing objectives.

3. Results can be really skewered as people build their lists with mainly mobility in mind. It then becomes a game of not who is the best army, but who is the fastest army on the ground.

Now there's nothing wrong with Maelstrom missions. I actually quite enjoy them myself. However, I don't feel it is representative of how the game should be played competitively. It's like playing basketball, but each turn, you randomize what each team needs to do. Maybe one turn, I need to make a basket into your hoop. Then another turn, I need to make a basket into my own hoop. Then another turn, I need to steal the ball in order to get a point. Then another turn, I need to block a shot in order to get a point. IMO, it is not conducive to competitive play because you aren't playing on a level playing field (as you are with set objectives such as Eternal War missions).

Anyways, that's my take on Maelstrom missions.

But I nobody ever suggested PURE maelstrom. The BAO, I'd argue, isn't using maelstrom. Heck NOVA has as much right to claim their playing modified maelstrom is BAO is going to.

Also eternal war missions are not ever level. 40k makes this impossible since you have one player getting the final chance to secure set objectives over another, which by the way is even more lopsided in a timed format. It's simply inaccurate to suggest that it is more balance since the games mechanics aren't balanced.

As to the random nature.... come on man, cop out. While there are random powers like invisibility around that can tilt a game to almost set odds you can't blame maelstroms short comings on its random nature. In fact it is one of the few random elements that proves to level the field not make it worse. Random objectives make the game more tactical, I will say the random die roll amounts for some of them are stupid since that is a situation where you have no influence other then seeing what the card is worth that time around.

Honestly I think maelstrom are the only things keeping 40k playable at all in 7th. They need some subtle adjusting but it is not nearly as chaotic as some internet heads preach.

 Red Corsair wrote:

The BAO maelstrom format is not without its issues though, and the frontline guys actually don't remedy there missions often enough. You can't seriously tell me that after the BAO they had a perfect system in place and nothing could be improved, yet the appear to be content with leabving the missions be. I do really like that they have two ways to win though, this is the best part of their format, though I think they should alternate between primary and secondary. By that I mean its lazy that they always have the maelstrom side secondary and thus worth less points, alternating would be such an easy fix. As for their take on maelstrom? I appreciate simple things but this is way to simple. Actually it's modified to the point where I question that they even have the right to call it maelstrom. Asymmetrical mission format? Sure. Maelstrom? Not anymore.

I never even mentions sources. I am aware that 40k requires at least SOME form of comp to play competitively, which is exactly why I was referring to detachments not sources. While I think unlimited sources is much, I also think 2 is way too restrictive and places little no faith or trust in the community in attendance at all.

I will definitely agree with you in referrence to wanting simpler 40k back. But I think you either say one source no self allying or you trust the player base and let them use the system with as few restrictions as possible. 2 sources is not that route.

BTW you ARE on the inside with Reece now as a team 0 comp member, maybe you can help make a tighter format

If there is enough complaints about the BAO format, I am sure the Frontline guys would do something about it (like have a poll for people to vote on). They've been very democratic about it. But since not a lot of people are griping about their format (at least not to my knowledge), then why fix a system that isn't broken? Personally, I like the BAO format for its straight-forwards and very simple design. The only change that I would recommend would probably be that their Maelstrom objectives be rolled for and scored at the each player's turn instead of each game turn. This way, it minimizes the importance of going 2nd in the game for a double-contest (contesting both the Primary and the Secondary).

If you have a certain format in mind, PM me and I will consider bringing it to their attention if I think it is better than their current system. Just keep in mind that I am against formats that are too complicated or that takes a PHD to comprehend. Simple and balanced are what I am most concerned about.





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BTW, coming up tomorrow, another test game....


1850 Jy2's Pentyrant Tyranids vs Spam Adam's Tau

Honestly the biggest fault I have with their format is scoring and tallying points at the bottom of the turn which we are in agreement on it seems.

My other main complaint is that the primary and secondary never alternate. Unless I am wrong here, but it seems that maelstrom is never the primary, its not good enough to tell players they have an alternative to killing invisideathstars and spammed FMC's when you MUST achieve the tertiary along with the secondary to overcome primary, and because first blood is so hard to get from the aforementioned lists I think you can see where I am going here. Those two changes would be incredibly simple and IMHO would fix many of the problems that they already have issue with (invis and rerolls).

I was ranting a bit before mainly because I hate when people knock maelstrom when it is not nearly as busted as they make it out to be. So apologies for the tangent and long windedness, I am a bit tired ATM

Aside from that I think they should Allow for more detachments. Not more sources, just more detachments since some armies like DE and Orks are kneecapped hard with only two detachments being allowed.