Tyranids vs Daemons, 2000 pts picture batrep

This was a really fun game, 2000 pts, Emperors Will

with my Tyranids vs Tim's Daemons.

This time I opted for the run of the mill flyrant with 2x TL-devourers with brainleech worms,
He performed so-so, mainly due to grounding himself with a perils of the warp on turn 2.

A last minute switch from a tervigon to the internet-loathed haruspex because I realized I only brought the 30 termagants that I was deploying and no extras for spawning. More on that later.

I got first turn and deployed my acid spray tyrannofexes on each side of the objective, supported by some warriors and a blob of termagants and a lone Zoanthrope in the ruin for extra synapse. Because of the previous battle where I used the long range rupture cannons I sort of placed the Tyrannofexes hanging back a bit, which was a bit dumb, but one of them went to town right away, moving up and spewing acid on a big blob of blood letters, killing four of them.

I also used two units of Genestealers (never used them before), one was Cryptus and his sons, the other was just 10 + a brood lord (with talons and toxin sacs for the Broody).

I infiltrated them and put one on my right flank as close as possible in a ruin, and the other I put in the central ruins, accidentaly super close to the bloodletter blob so it looked likely there was gonna be a turn 1 charge!

Hive tyrant tried to fix this predicament with casting paroxysm on the bloodletters, lowering their ws by 2, not enough this time to make them hit on 5´s though. (And it was literally the only good power I rolled).

The Daemons however had some really good spells going, 2x cursed earth for example as both the pink horrors and their herald managed to roll it. 3+ invuln bubble got off and things were looking quite dark for the central genestealers!

EDIT: apperantly we made a huge mistake and thought Cursed earth was a +2 to the invuln save!

lucky for me though the bloodletter failed their charge through the ruins, as Tim realized he hadn't brought their banner. Phew!

He did spawn some flamers of tzeentch on the pink horrors right flank and BBQ'd some hormagaunts, but not nearly as many as he could have, if he ever had managed to roll averagely!

his skull cannon on the right flank shot at cryptus and his unit, scattering over their heads, and only killing two and putting a wound on Cryptus himself (it could have done some serious damage, ignoring cover and being s7 ap5!)

the Seekers of Slaanesh charged into them as well, getting shred to ribbons by the insane close combat prowess of tooled up genestealers with an enormous broodlord! And ended up giving Cryptus a 5" consolidate move towards the skull cannon, he would easily get a charge in on my next turn now.

The Daemon prince advanced midfield, its eyes set on one of the Tyrannofexes, casting enfeeble on it. But after taking a wound from overwatch he also failed his charge! This is why you want fleet on your assault dudes! :0 

Turn 2 saw the genestealers and hormagaunts charge into the meatgrinder!

the genestealers did quite a number on the bloodlettes but their new found 3+ invuln kept them alive, but their low number of attacks when not charging kept the bloodletters from simply wiping the floor with the genestealers and instead turned into a complete whiff as not a single stealer of jeans died!

the Hormagants didn't fare much better, striking last as well, and killing only one pink horror!

the right flank saw Cryptus pluck the rider of the skull cannon of his gun and steadily advance up the backfield of the Daemon deployment!

Meanwhile the Haruspex and Tyrannofex considered double teaming the Dameon prince, but the tyrannofex failed to both wound and charge the Prince.

The Haruspex however, lashing out with his tongue, taking a second wound of the prince, then charged in.
the bigass Deamon did 3 wounds to the Haruspex no problem, getting bathed in it's acid blood in the process, but then the Haruspex struck wounded him twice, the dameons invuln save failing him, making the bug generate two more attacks, of which yet another found its mark, gravely wounding the Daemon prince and by the end of the combat the acid blood took its toll, killing the prince!
That's one hellova badass lunch you got there, Haruspex.

Hive tyrant cast paroxysm on the bloodletters before the close combat, this time lowering their ws by 3, making them hit on 5´s! this was pretty huge since they were still sitting on a 3+ invuln and the genestealers had no save whatsoever. 

However the Hive tyrant periled and rolled a 1! luckily he made his leadership test, so he only took a wound, but it did instead cause him to fall to the ground, taking yet another wound! He's half dead and on the ground, with only himself to blame...

This round however saw the four armed bug people attack at initiative, of course the broodlord whiffed all of his attacks (and I forgot about his toxin sacs for rerolling to wound). His lessers didn't however and managed to take out a few bloodletters, losing only 2 genestalers in return.

Daemons turn 2 saw the flamers jumpin to the aid of the pink horrors, dwindling down the hormagaunts to a measly 7.

A group of plaguebearers materealized infront of Cryptus, intent on stopping him from reaching the Daemons objective.

Daemonettes appeard on the other side of the meatgrinder to stop the advance of the now grounded hive tyrant and it's buddies tyrannofex and carnifex.

a skördetröska.... I mean Seeker chariot of slaanehs landed behind them, most likely gunning for the gants and warriors near my objective.

Speaking of my objective

Kairos was fluttering around it and dropped some khorne dogs almost right on top of it.

then the warpstorm took the damn hive tyrant, the dice might not be with Tim, but the dark gods seemed to be.

Turn 3 saw Cryptus slicing and dicing all but the plague herald's last wound, the other genestealers pushing the bloodletters down to 4 guys, the decked out melee warriors finally reached combat and killed the flamers, but he rolled double 1's so they came back!

The Haruspex had joined the genestealers too, but that's 3+ invuln kept him from making a thai buffet out of them. with only 4 attacks on the charge and ws3 he's a bit of a gamble if he will get anything done or not.

the tyrannofex melted a couple of seekers and charged in, mostly to prevent them from going after the warriors who were my only central synapse by now xD

The carnifex doubled back, shot the chariot in the back and immobilized it but failed his charge.

in return the warpstorm took the carnifex out by doing exactly 4 wounds to it with ap3!

the seekers did 3 wounds to the tyrannofex, the plagueberaer herald got snacked on and more bloodletters materialized to protect the objective.

This is how it looked after bottom of turn 3, genestealers in the centre broke through and obsec'd the Daemon objective, the haruspex drooled longingly for that new unit of bloodletters that just came in, Cryptus primed to charge them too, or the screamers. Warriors in the backfield had taken care of the Khorne dogs with a little help from the Termagants, there was just no way for the Daemons to recover from this.

8-1 to the Tyranids on start of turn 4/bottom of 3.

This was a brutal match, with two key failed charges putting the daemons up against the wall on turn 2 and only thanks to us messing up Cursed earth were they able to tank a lot of wounds that would otherwise have seen the Tyranids hold both objectives a turn earlier!

Post battle thoughts:

I think on the right flank, the seekers almost helped Cryptus slingshot ahead, his unit started 18" away in the back end of the run, moved up, ran with fleet just out of the ruin, and then mopped up the charging seekers to consolidate another 5" towards the Skull cannon, who had moved away 6" to get some distance and shoot, so on my turn 2 I was in decent charge range even before I moved up. if I had rolled a 1 or 2 on my consolidate or the seekers would have held off I might have failed that charge.

In hindsight a better move would probably have been to either screen the cannon with the seekers, as it ignores cover anyway, or simply to have hanged back and charged the genestealers on turn 2.
There was nothing really wrong with the deployment of the skull cannon, except it being on his far left flank so I could infiltrate and force him to shoot at Cryptus instead of my units protecting my objective (like the blob of 30 Termagants for example!).

The failed charge by the Bloodletters really cost him too, as they have such a low number of attacks and would greatly benefit from their furius charge, with twice the number of attacks and wounding on 3´s they could have really done a number on the genestealers, if they could weather the attacks first.

That was further not helped that the flamers of tzeentch killed only 8 hormagaunts when they hit like 16, wounding on 3's and ignoring all saves. and instead they gave them a 6+ fnp as well.

The Haruspex really surprised us, chewing the head of that Deamon prince in one round of combat and regenerating 2 of the 3 wounds it took, only to later regenerate that last wound too. Granted the Prince had taken two wounds prior to the combat but it would probably have been killed by the deamonic instability anyway.

The Haruspex only had 4 attacks on the charge, and was hitting on 5's because of its cruddy ws3, but its prowess comes from s7 base and s8 with adrenal glands and generating more attacks if it causes unsaved wounds, so it really did 6 attacks, plus hammer of wrath and single ap2 shooting attack and whatever acid blood can pull off as every unsaved wound it takes forces an initiative test on the opponent and if he fails he takes a s5 ap2 hit. It adds up but you need a fair bit of luck to get a good round of combat out of this thing.
Also it's lame that it only generates more attacks that way on the turn it charges.

Edit: it apperantly only regenerates one wound no matter how many unsaved wounds it causes.

And it has crushing claws giving it +1 strength. so it's s7 base with 8 on the charge.

Tyranids Vs Astra Militarum 1750 pts Picture Batrep

Anders is back in Sweden and he brought some new toys, the Astra Militarum!
pretty much wysiwyg all the way, with a commisar and a psyker in the big unit of infantry, and led by Pask in a punisher backed up by a standard leman russ.

I tried out the Skytyrant formation, 2 units of 10 Gargoyles form up with a flying hive tyrant to form one unit. It's a sweet way to have a melee Tyrant on the ground that can still move fast (12" due to all being jump infantry, basically). Instead of taking Tyrant guard who will slow you down considerably.

the downside is that in Purge the alien, this is 3 VP, 4 because it's my warlord.... And of course we rolled Purge the Alien as the objective!

I tested using 2 Tyrannofexes with Rupture cannons, and I gotta say I loved them, but I can see enemy vehicles getting any form of cover save would make them nigh useless because they only fire two shots each at bs3, and while being s10, they're only ap4 so your best bet is to hope for weapon destroyed or stunned, shaken is good too against tanks that fire blast or template weapons.

They did take out Pask pretty quickly though!

I lost most my little gribbles really fast due to well, all the freaking guns AM can poop out.
My Gargoyles just made it into close combat with, just to finally die there, but hey. They delivered the Tyrant safely, and he ended up sweeping the entire unit a turn later, netting me 3 vp's!

But the tyrant later fell, and in the end I only had my big Tyrannofexes left and a single carnifex, as the game ended. I think it was something like 11-9 to Astra Militarum, it was a freaking bloodbath!

Starting a Tyranid force

So I got a Tyranid Army.

First I bought the Deathstorm box, adding some Marines to my Iron hands (carefully cutting away most Blood angel iconography!)
Aaaand then I got an offer to trade all my Orks for a huge (and largely unpainted) Tyranid army, for roughly the same amount of $ as I had spent on my Orks, great!

It took me weeks to decide on a colour scheme for these guys, then one day I asked myself. What colours are the official ones for the Zerg from Starcraft? I googled a few pictures and went, hell yes, I can go for something like that. The Zerg are purple and brown, sort of fading from one colour to the next, Tyranids have a much sharper contrast were the carapace ends/begins. I also went for an earthy brown heavily highlighted with orange. The dark purple is actually mixed with the same orange for highlights too, but I haven't really done that for most of the smaller 'Nids yet.

My Tyranids are actually extremely close combat focused, with only some dakka on my Flyrant (becaise landing and not being able to assault gets you killed), and one of my Warrior groups has a barbed strangler, because pinning is amazing before an assault.

So far I got

1 Flyrant

2 Tervigons~70 Termagants

30 Hormagaunts

9 warriors

13 Genestealers

1 Broodlord

1 Spawn of Cryptus

1 Zoanthrope (in metal...)

2 Carnifexes

3 Raveners (also in metal)

I love Carnifexes, even though 4 wounds kind of hurts them, but 2x Scything talons and adrenal glands + toxin sacs makes them really scary in assault. usually hitting on 4+ wounding on 2+ with rerolls to wound (and s10 on the charge) and the extra attack from two pairs of talons should make them pretty killy against most targets.

I really really want some Tyrannofexes too, but their weapons seem kind of meh on paper, but boy are they cool, and I could use some shooting in my army I bet.

I will probably, as it stands now before I've playtested my army, be using the Endless Swarm Formation from Leviathan, because I love hormagaunts and they can get back in the game on a 4+ if they get wiped out. So 3 'small' units with toxin sacs should be pretty useful.

Can't wait to try my army out and see what I should get for them next.

(and what should go in those tyrannocytes that I really really want?)

1700 pts Iron hands Vs. Tyranids

played a 1700 pts game against Anders 'new' Nids outside of the local tournament.

Mission was The Emperors will, long sides deployment (dawn of war?)

My list was almost my usual one with 10 tactical marines, 5 snipers scouts with a ML+flakk, 3 attack bikes (all heavy bolters now), 3 Centurion Devestators with 2 Grav-cannons, a TL-lascannon and all missile launchers + the Omniscope

Chapter master with Chains of the Gorgon, plasma pistol and a thunder hammer, 5 Honour guards with chapter banner, power swords and one power axe. In a Razorback with storm bolter and TL-heavy flamer, another 10 man tactical squad with plasma cannon & plasma gun. And lastly a stormtalon gunship with the heavy 2 s8 ap3 shot weapon (thunderstrike?)

The nids consisted of 30 termagaunts, 2 Zoanthropes, 1 Venomthrope

2 Carnifexes (as one brood, with TL-devourers)

one Tervigon, a Foot-slogging hive tyrant and one flying with TL-devourers

An Exocrine and 3 hive guard.

Tyranids got first turn, I think night fighting was on. one of the Zoans hit the scouts with The Terror psychic power and managed to pin them

he then basically just moved up, his flying Hive tyrant shooting at my scouts 

(because they have the flakk ML)

despite being in area terrain, gone to ground and having camo cloaks

he managed to kill all but two Scouts with his Twin-linked Devourers

Luckily for me, he had placed his other Zoanthrope a bit off and it could not see the Razorback

On my turn I moved the razorback up, trying to keep it in some cover by the rocks up ahead.

The Ironclad Dreadbert dropped behind enemy lines and fired all his weaponry into the venomthrope, because if I could bring it down, it would be way easier to take out the rest of the Tyranids. It however failed to kill it, leaving it with one wound, as well as getting a few hits in on the carnifexes and termagaunts with the heavy flamer, killing two termagaunts. the Drop pod fired its Deathwind launcher, hitting the carnifexes and tervigon, I think it managed to make a wound on one Carnifex. In my opinion 15 points for a  s5 large blast is quite worth it if you expect to drop in close to massed infantry.

My attack bikes fired at the flying hive tyrant to try and bring it down, but failed to do so. The two remaining, and pinned, scouts shot at it as well (with snap shots, they might as well), but failed to hit it.

my plasma toting tactical squad moved up behind the razorback, with some covering fire coming from the heavy bolter on the first tactical squad.

The Centurions fired at the Exocrine, because I needed this beast dead! An Ap2 large blast hitting my honour guard? No thank you!
They felled the monsterous creature with combined missile launchers, grav-cannnons and the TL-lascannons.
One less to worry about!

The Nids once again surged forwards, the Zoanthrope (nicknamed Zoey) blew up the razorback this time, leaving a crater full of honour guard, and the chapter master took a wound! but rather him than killing off an honour guard.

 the two Carnifexes charged the Ironclad, taking wounds from its massive melee weapons and heavy flamer on overwatch, but succeeding in blowing it up. The Tervigon charged the Drop pod and turned it into scrap.

the Flying hive tyrant murderized the scouts with 11 hits from the TL-Devourers.

My honour guard nudged into the cover of the rocks, making sure to still protect the chapter master

who called down an orbital bombardment but it scattered way off target and hit nothing.

The attack bikes moved up to get line of sight on a Zoanthrope on the left flank, and managed to take it out.

The Centurions took out Zoey, the Other Zoanthrope. Ridding me of their pesky psychic powers.

The Stormtalon came in and I made the tactical error of moving it way too close to the Flying hive tyrant,

the TL-Devourers only having a range of 18" against the Stormtalons 48".

Tactical error aside the Stormtalon opened fire with its Twin-linked autocannon and typhoon missile launcher. Unfortunately, not only did the Hive tyrant survive, it wasn't even grounded!

Once again the Tyranids moved up, theTervigon hiding the venomthrope behind it and the gaunts screening the advance. 

The Flying hive tyrant moved towards the table edge, and then shot the stormtalon out of the sky by glancing off its two hull points!

the carnifexes opened fire on the tactical squad with plasmas and took out a few of them with the help of the hive guard.

The Hive tyrant (on foot) tried to charge the attack bikes that I had moved up too far, but instead failed his charge distance and managed to instead take a wound from overwatch!

on my turn I moved the honour guard up and debated for awhile wether to charge the Tervigon but suffer terrain hindrance and fight at initiative 1 (against a creature with ap2...) or tarpit myself  in the termagaunts.

I chose the latter and charged into them, slaying somewhere around 15 of them in a single go while only losing my honour guard champion. Then we remembered that he had cast the feel no pain on his gaunts and he saved 10! altough we forgot that some of those should not have gotten FNP from the wounds caused by my chapter masters thunder hammer.

the attack bikes moved back, away from the Hive tyrant. My centurions moved up and shot at the tervigon, putting some wounds on it.

when the gaunts piled in they completely surrounded the chapter master and his honour guard, thus denying the tervigon and carnifexes from charging in, so they instead moved towards my objective, the carnifexes and hive guard shooting at the tactical squad again, leaving only two standing! who failed their morale test and almost ran off the board.

on my turn the combined fire of the centurions, tactical squad and attack bikes, killed of the carnifexes and the tervigon, and at that point Anders conceded and it was gg!

I have a concern that the venomthrope, while being amazeballs, sometimes seem to almost hold the tyranids back, being a crutch almost as many units in the Tyranid army need to get across the board and into melee, but it's kind of hard to move fast and keep in range of the shrouded at the same time. Oh wel, just a thought (and having multiple venomthropes should fix that I think)

FOR THE EMPEROR!

Tyranids First and Not-so-First Impressions - A guest article

So the new Tyranids have been out a couple of weeks now, and me and the rest of the Tyranid players are slowly but surely rising out of the craters following the bombing that was the first impressions of the new codex. I'm not gonna lie, it was bad. Things had been removed, stuff that was good had been nerfed, and the new things in the codex seemed lackluster to say the least. I'm sure I wasn't alone in sending slightly angry e-mails to Games Workshop asking them what the playtesters of this mess had been smoking, but deep inside we knew nothing was going to change.

The new models were on their way, so I figured I would just ignore all the bad things I had been reading myself and that others had been telling me and just go for it. Try to make it work. I had noticed things like the Venomthrope being buffed, and some new statlines that could work (including the BS4 Hive Tyrants. Lovely!) so I tried to feel as positive as I could as I prepared for my first game with the new bugs, which so happened to be against the very person owning this here blog!

I was stunned, really, I was. Things were going really well. I was dodging shots left and right with my 3+ cover saves from the Venomthrope/Intervening models combo I had figured out, and my shooting went very well, with Warp Blasts from my Zoanthrope piercing Centurion armor, and my Hive Tyrant's Venom Cannon killing regular Marines. Slowly and steady I was stomping my way up the table, and soon enough I was ready to charge. The assaults went well, and with the constant spawning my Tervigon did, I never really ran out of cover for my bigger creatures. The game ended with a pretty crushing victory for the Hive Mind. ”New-codex-luck”? Maybe, but it had gone really well, and I felt pretty damn good.

The next targets for my dear Tyranids were the Orks of a player another town over. I had heard to be careful when playing against him from some of his friends and this time, I thought, the new Nids were going to meet their doom. This game was longer than the one with Mike, so I won't go into detail, but I won this game too! 2-1 in victory points, so not a huge victory, but a victory nonetheless.

So, in short, my first impressions were terrible. I was hugely dissapointed, and I really felt almost betrayed by Game Workshop. They had released a half-baked mess, I thought. However, as I 've played more games with them, they still have that Nids feeling. A lot of bugs, running around, giving cover to the big boys, stomping behind them. Venomthropes is the name of the game now. Venomthropes and lots of shooting. Preferably two Flyrants with devourers. Carnifexes are also really appealing now, being a lot cheaper. So if you were like me kids, and you thought the new Nids were nothing but xeno trash, think again. There is potential, and while many things were indeed nerfed, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you really try to create interesting combinations of different units. For the Hive Mind!

-Anders Alléus

'New' Tyranids Vs Iron hands. Tourney battle 1250 pts - The Relic

So Anders and I once again play the Relic mission. But this time he's bringing the new Tyranid Codex and units! The Spore pod (spore pod prime!) down on the right side of the image is the Relic for this game. worth 3 victory points.

His army looked something like this.
a hive tyrant with boneswords and a venom cannon, with two Tyrant guards, A Tervigon, a Venomthrope, 2 units of termagaunts, an Exocrine, 3 hive guard, a Zoanthrope and a Hive Crone.

I brought my Chapter master with artificier armor, plasma pistol and Axe of medusa.

5 honour guard, with chapter banner and 1 power axe, the rest toting power swords.

10 tactical marines, heavy bolter, meltagun and a sgt, with a gravgun and meltabomb.

5 sniper scouts, one with a missile launcher+ flakk.

3 centurions, 2 grav-cannons a TL-Lascannon, omniscope and 3 Missile launchers

Ironclad dread with 2 HK-missiles, heavy flamer and meltagun, in a Drop pod

3 Attack bikes, 2 Heavy bolters and one Multimelta

There was a couple of things we got wrong in this game, the biggest one is that we have always thought Instant death took away all saves except cover saves (!) wich is pretty huge.
I didn't know I could move and shoot with slow and purposeful as if stationary, thus severely shortening the range of my grav-cannons in this game.

I got first turn + night fighting and I have never deployed worse in my life! I dunno what the heck I was thinking. My centurions were off on the right side, far back in a ruin, not in range for anything, my tacticals were far back in the centre, which was so stupid because I already knew I was gonna have a hard time to even get to the relic against the Tyranids. my snipers were in a good positions in a ruin to my left, backed up by my attack bikes.
But on top of my poor deployment I decided that hey! lets just move the attack bikes further up on the left flank in behind a building so they can't do shit for a turn, waggle my Centurions up to try and get in range/LoS so at least the lascannon+missile launcher can fire and hey, lets move my only close combat unit into the central ruin so they will be even slower! And then I moved up my tactical squad, out of cover and into the open.  Then instead of drop podding my Ironclad near his warlord to try and go for first blood/slay the warlord I drop him near the exocrine and zoanthrope and do one wound to the Exocrine...

in total I killed two Termagaunts on turn 1 because everything pretty  much had 3+ cover saves.

Tactical genius achieved!

On tyranid turn one he managed (due to us not knowing how Instand death worked!) kill 5 tactical marines in one blast from the venom cannon, then he killed the dreadnought with the exocrine taking one hull point and then the Zoanthrope one shotted it with a s10 ap2 Lance shot! Giving him first blood and breaking Dreadberts run of staying alive for 3 turns and smashing things up :(

on my next turn I instead of keep the bikes going towards his table edge, I doubled back and shot the 2 Heavy bolters and multimelta + TL-bolters into the gaunts that had moved up to the Relic. Missing horribly!

I dropped the Orbital Bombardment on the Hive tyrant, killing a tyrant guard. in hindsight I should have nuked the Venomthrope. That would have made shooting the rest of his army so much easier.

My centurions did very little on turn 2 as well, which is really bad. I need them to start wasting enemies turn 1....Not turn 3!

The Tyranids then opted to kill one centurion and take the Relic. And then just generally moved up the board, the Tervigon spawning even more termagaunts. The Hive Crone came in and killed two honour guard in the ruins with his vector strike! 

The Iron hands answered by letting the rookie bs3 scouts fire at it, one sniper and the flakk missile actually hit. the sniper failing to wound but the missile not only put a wound on him, it also grounded the foul beast, taking another wound from it! the halved tactical squad shot at it bringing it down to one wound left that the Chapter master saw fit to take with is plasma pistol, slaying the Hive Crone. Thank the Emperor!

The tyranids retalieted by charging the honour guard through the ruins with a group of fresh termagaunts, stalling the Chapter master from getting to the Relic. Needless to say the Honour guard decimated most of the gaunts, but as they are fearless in synapse they didn't move. the Gaunts with the Relic started moving away from my lines to steal it away.

My Honour guard and chapter master cut their way through the last gaunts and moved to try and catch up to the relic, but was intercepted by even more gaunts with the tervigon right behind them.

the attack bikes tried to drive past and go for line breaker to give me at least one victory point for the tournament, but the hive tyrant chased them down and crushed them.

I think I had lost my centurions around this point to the Exocrine and Zoanthrope duo.
My snipers tried to make the gaunts drop the relic but even though I got a precision shot in, it failed to wound. 

At the end the snipers were all that was left and we decided that the game could end now with Anders getting all the Victory points possible from the Relic mission and me getting 0.

Not a great start to the tournament for me but at least it was cool to see the new Nids in action. Not a bad codex, with lots of cool combos possible. Not an OP codex either wich, as always, leave the internet trolls raging like it's the end of the world. I like it. though Venomthropes are such a pain!