Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Not Quite a Batrep - plus Hobby Update



First - the quick and easy: hopefully this slideshow thing works; one would hope as Google owns Blogger and Picasa.  Pics are of my WIP Harpy and complete but unpainted Parasite of Mortrex.  Pay no mind to the horrendous base on the Harpy...  that was the base the Fell Beast came with from Ebay; but not a bad result for a $15 Harpy with broken wings and no tail.  Not shown are my newly built two shiny dakkafexes and 6-strong unit of DS, scytal, VC warriors.  

Next up is this 'not quite a batrep' business.  A somewhat long story, but the important parts are that I finally got to play a couple 5e games with my nids, learned quite a bit, and met some really neat folks.

I went down to Games and Stuff last week and met a few Inner Circle folks, where I saw a post about a 40k tournament at synDCon on the same weekend of Adepticon run by the FAIL Gamers group.  My Saturday was unexpectedly clear, so I stayed up all night getting a playable if unpainted force together, then found out the tourney was canceled due to lack of registered entrants, but FAIL would still be running open gaming.  I figured if enough people showed, the tourney would be a go, or at worst, get a pickup game or two in, plus it was a convention - lots to do.  Turned out to be a very RPG heavy con, with almost two dozen tables of various RPGs running all day, but precious little else.  Salvation arrived in the form of FAIL's president, Gorath, bringing two tables worth of terrain and a couple armies to demo with.  Lessons learned after the jump...

We ended up playing two games as demo events for the convention, teaching a few kids the basics and just having a good time showing off the hobby to new people.  Great reminder that kids will always be a core part of the hobby, just like painting and tournament play.  The first battle was a 500 point skirmish with nids vs. Iron Warriors on an urban battlefield - where I learned that there definitely is such a thing as too much terrain.  I took 6 stealers, 4 wars, 1 HG, and a tervigon vs. 3 squads and a hero of some sort.  Other lessons:

  • Don't charge even a combat squad in cover with a tervigon and no support unless you're desperate.
  • Charging warriors are a fearsome thing.
  • Tox vs. regular troops is a waste.  Nice to have the flexibility to be a threat to a high T unit in a balanced list, but I can definitely appreciate the arguments about not needing tox on stealers.

Game 2 was bigger; 2k vs 2k, me and a kid with some ancient metal nids with 1k each vs. Gorath's 2k worth of Iron Warriors.  The kid took a 340 point tyrant with wings, a blob of almost 30 devilgaunts, a biovore, a squad of warriors with mixed weapons, and a paper cutout of an HG.  Not quite tourney legal, but all in good fun.  Since he had a big troop presence, I took a tervigon, 15 stealers, 8 ymgarl, 3 HG, 3 Zoans, and a Mawloc.  Very open terrain.  I managed to wipe out his possessed, a vindicator, two tac squads and two devastator squads, plus his champion/leader whatever.  Iron Warriors were pretty vanilla, with the possessed gaining furious charge for the game, which I promptly allowed him to do against my stealers by leaving a gap in my gant bubble wrap.  Placement lesson learned...  but Gorath was by that time already calling me an "umbrella cover" bastard after I deployed my infiltrated stealers across the entire force frontage.  FNP made all the difference though - the possessed couldn't take the squad down and they got whittle down over two turns, and finished when the terv joined in.  The HGs popped the vindicator, while the zoans almost single-handedly wiped two squads from the map with warp blast.
Lessons learned:

  • I definitely liked the zoans, but psychic hoods will negate them.
  • FNP makes a big bug broods tough to take out - see note on psychic hoods.
  • Really wish I'd used broodlords - they will absolutely make a major difference in combat; and 2 points more than it would cost to just buy 3 more stealers; at least vs. meq.
  • Revisited my strategy of using only 2 biovores; it will take a brood of 3 to be decently effective vs meq - definitely about forcing saves.
  • Mawloc didn't do horribly - he ate 3 marines and tied up a squad for 2 rounds, killing another 3, and then became a fire magnet keeping fire from my stealers, who promptly ate another squad.  Need to learn how to time Hit and Run.
  • Need to work on what the heck to do with a tervigon after it is out of gants - both games my tervs rolled doubles on turn 1.
  • Bring phone charger/laptop to take pics and better notes
Quite the wall o'text.  Just glad I finally got some playtime in.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

3 comments:

  1. When my Tervigon is out of babies I let it stomp forward into combat. The only other option is to hide on an objective and wait it out.

    Whenever I take stealers without Tox they seem to end up fighting T5 models...

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  2. You son of a....WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF A DRAGON?!? *bangs head against wall*

    -ahem- That's very interesting, and I can't wait to see it painted...the Parasite is kewl too....

    My Lashwhip/Bonesword Primes and Warriors w/Dual Swords chopped up so many HQ and Elite Space Marines that after a while my regular opponents wouldn't go near them...so I added Broods of Raveners to flank them, then leap out (suprise- they're Beasts!) and tie down enemies who tried to sneak into Rapid-Fire range of the Warriors....
    Yeah, they hack stuff into tiny chunks and that scares people...

    I think Toxin makes a difference in bigger games...the times I've run 'stealers without it I know I've missed it, but it is expensive and is one of the things I'll drop if I'm either short on points or running two Broods.

    Did you Pod the Zoey's or march them? I've been tempted to work some into a list, but Hoods are too darn popular.
    The Tyranid Player who made the Top 4 at Adepticon ran a Brood on foot (which is a good idea I think, as Zoey's in a Pod seem like an expensive suicide unit, with the added hassle of passing Psyker tests to shoot...and potentially failing due to Hoods), and some other players I know, like Thatguyoverthere, from the YtTH forums, advocates them.
    Color me curious about Foot-Zoeys...not that they actually have feet...

    Intersting thought on the Broodlord...I've almost got mine painted, and I keep building lists with him...and then taking him out...and then I put him back in cuz the model is so cool...and the I take him out again...
    I think you just convinced me to take him for a test ride for a few games.

    A T5 CC Beast like that will be fun, and at least eat a couple of Missiles for the Brood (who will have FNP usually, if I can manage it).
    I'm interested in seeing if I can make Aura of Despair and Hypnotic Gaze do anything cool, as well- two Broodlords working 'Aura,' combined with Torrenting a squad to produce a Ld check, sounds like it has potential to be annoying.

    Tervigons doubling out on turn one is why I try to build lists that don't rely on the Spawns to succeed.

    And lastly...looking foward to a Biovore 'how-to.'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just wanna whore myself out for a sec-
    I currently have an article about Tyranid List Construction up at Best Overall.
    I hope Tyranid fans will check it out!

    http://bestoverall.blogspot.com/2011/04/proper-care-and-feeding-of-tyranids.html

    ReplyDelete