battle 3 against chaos space marines with daemon allies, Nathan got a free pass the first game with full points and thus had to fight Justin's nurgle marines with guard allies, the only player that got full points in round one. and Nathan beat him, proving that his random pass first round was well deserved.
so in round 3 we squared off, mission was to control 5 objectives on the table, one worth 1 pint, the others 2 points each. secondary goal was kill points.
here Nathans army:
2x chaos sorcerer with MoS and lash of submission
8 thousand sons marines with sorcerer with psychic shriek in a rhino
7 plague marines with icon and 2x melta gun in rhino
7 plague marines with icon and 2x plasma gun in rhino
chaos vindicator with daemonic possession
2x obliterators
2x obliterators
allies:
2x herald of tzeench in chariot with bolt of Tz. and breath of chaos
6x plague bearers
3x flamers of Tz.
aegis defense line with AA quad gun
the battle started out well for me, the hive guard and the flyrant took out his quad gun, the tervigon started breeding a bunch of lil ones again (about 32 all together) and we started our general advance.
he gave back quite well, his thousand sons nuking a unit of gaunts with a combo of psi scream and bolter fire but his other targets proved to resilient (yay for 3++ on the zoas and iron arm on the TMCs). he also tried to nuke the stealers that infiltrated close to his line but they took cover and survived with only 1 causality. from there on it was a bloody battle but multiple units of newly bred gaunts were able to secure objectives, the doom and flyrant paralyzed the plague marines with sorcerers, the stealers and raveners took out the thousand sons and i was putting him on the defensive. the chariots and flamers brought too little too late (word of advice, never charge flamers with MCs, 3xD3 hits that wound on 4+ with no armor saves turned my Trygon into red and blue confetti)
after holding up his main units the swarm lord finally arrived to tear up the last pockets of resistance and the plague bearers arrived on turn 4 to claim his only objective. after it was all set and done i achieved another 22 battle points.
a great performance in the battles, great points for painting and sportsmanship gave me a total of 94.5 points, just one more point then Mason that also won all 3 games with his eldar/ork alliance.
so first place for me with Nids, not too shabby for their first venture into semi serious 6th ed waters.
the tourney was good fun, very nice attitudes and neat armies and Aaron did a great job organizing and running it. it was very refreshing to see funky stuff on the tables, so all in all i give 6th edition a thumbs up.
here a little break down of the way my units performed:
the swarm lord is a beast, biomancy makes him super resilient, his ability to grant furious charge and preferred enemy allow him to influence the battle while he advances, 18 inch synapse came in a few times and where he shows up carnage ensues. in close combat he just tears stuff up while return attacks are generally shrugged off.
the flyrant is a great unit to take pressure off of the main line and he is able to surgically remove some threats. in straight combat he wheezes a bit sometimes but he did last long enough to hold units in place until the rest of the army arrived.
the hive guard are a good bread and butter unit, able to send some fire where it is needed and T6 makes them durable enough to advance some to threaten the enemy wherever they may be hiding.
the zoanthropes are still great at dealing with any sorts of vehicles except fliers and their 3++ had quite a few guys gnashing their teeth at them.
the doom in a pod was a great distraction, never did too much but was a general pain in the butt and helped other units do their thing.
the tervigon just rocks, the spewing forth of the gaunts can be an enormous boon but even as just an MC with 3 biomancy powers is a foe to be reckoned with. TS and AG as her standard load out help her tear up stuff and 6 wounds are huge coupled with things like FNP and IT WILL NOT DIE! cause some serious problems for opponents.
the devilgaunts are great, 30 shots per volley are unpleasant to say the least for any kind of infantry (of which we now see more actually on the field instead of roaming around in metal boxes) and the occasional preferred enemy from the swarm lord make them even uglier.
the stealers are okay but the brood lord is a real monster now. it was ruled that he gets to redraw shooting psi powers so the odds are good to get iron arm and him fighting infantry that cannot even harm him gives me a warm feeling in my guts. i am considering minimizing his squad so that he can sooner take advantage of his high T against shooting attacks and maybe squeeze another set like that into my army.
the raveners are okay, a bit fragile against S8+ weapons but 3 wounds each, great mobility and many rending attacks make them the perfect unit to pounce non-CC enemy units and light vehicles.
work best if they use the ninja way to approach the enemy, lots of cover and LOS blocking terrain even at the cost of taking a turn longer.
the trygon has lost a bit of luster when compared to TMCs that can use psi powers but he is still a rock solid choice with 6 wounds and many accurate attacks in close combat.
overall the nids are at a bit of a loss as to how to deal with fliers other then some lucky shots or the flyrant (not that easy to pull off a vector strike against a clever opponent though)
other then that i think the nids still have big potential, unless the opponent maintains a very strict discipline he will be unable to deal with the multitude of gribblies with decent fire support.
when it does come to close combat carefully consider making challenges with those that can, uttering one or not can make a huge difference, so make sure you are fluent in those rules and can predict the likely outcome one way or another.
also remember, the more choices the opponent has to make as to what unit to target, the more likely he is to pick the wrong one.
