2000 - Drop Nids... evolution of an army

[rampagingfex]

After playing in a tournament, and some friendly games with this army: thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=tyranidlists&action=display&thread=41425

I've learned a few things.. BATREP here: thetyranidhive.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=Tactics&action=post&thread=41449"e=709250&page=1

The initial drop was overwhelming in most games, and I was never in danger of getting tabled like I initially thought, but the scoring units and synapse were both weak spots in the army. Here is the next evolution that is designed to combat those weak points:

-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-= TYRANIDS 2000 POINTS -==--=-=-=-=-=-=-=
ON THE TABLE
265 - Hive Tyrant, Armored Shell, 2 Devourers, Hive Commander
60 - Tyrant Guard
160 - Tervigon x1 (HQ)

RESERVE
160 - Tervigon x1 (TROOP) outflank (Hammer & Anvil) or deploy (Relic)
161 - Y-stealers x7 (dormant)
210 - Trygon, Toxin sacs (Deep strike)
240 - Trygon Prime (Deep Stike)

MUST RESERVE
190 - Gaunts x15, devourers, spore pod, ripper tentacles (Deep Stike)
190 - Warriors x5, devourers, scything, spore pod, ripper tentacles (Deep Stike)
230 - Carnifex, 2 devourers, spore pod, ripper tentacles (Deep Stike)
130 - Doom of Malan'tai, spore pod, ripper tentacles (Deep Stike)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

This army operates under the same premise as my last Tyranid army, but it trades some firepower (unit of devourer gaunts and Hive Guard) for some scoring resiliency (extra tervigon and drop pod warriors). It should have 3-4 more scoring units than my other army and a more resilient synapse web, since there is an extra potentially outflanking scoring Tervigon, and there are dropping warriors. It still has the same Trygon and Trygon Prime setup, as well as the same Hive Tyrant builds, since those were both very effective.

I think in the end this may be a safer way to play against most opponents. The difference between 5 devourers (warriors) and 15 devourers (gaunts) is only about 2 dead marines, and the warriors actually provide a little bit of combat efficiency if needed. Add to that, the fact that I love the warrior models and would like to find a way to make them good again, and I am really excited to play this. The warrior squad is somewhat small, in order to hide behind their pod if needed, and to keep their cost down. Only question here is, would it be worth to try and upgrade them to 4 bone sword warriors, or just keep the extra wounds and the cheaper price with stock equipment. Remember, they are dropping in with a lot of targets that compete for S8 shooting (Trygon, Prime, Doom, Fex, Pods, and there are still Tyrant and Tervis coming into range at that point as well)

This army can go as low as 3 models deployed on the board to start the game, but most times I expect to deploy 4 models. Tyrant, Guard, Tervi, Tervi... who should quickly become about 20-25 models after spawning.

Comments and Critiques welcomed. Thanks for looking.



-RF

[swarmy]

I think you need to pad it with bodies at the start because if you go second and get tabled turn 1 (highly possible with armies like DE full of poison weapons) you auto-lose before any reserves are even dropped. At 2k most armies can put out quite a few wounds at least at 36", obviously most of which are anti-tank low AP.

[rampagingfex]

Thanks for the comments Swarmy. I'm not surprised this is the first comment....This is, after all, the number one concern I had when putting this army together. On paper I will admit it it does seem to be vulnerable to a quick tabling, but practical experience has shown otherwise.

Game play experience over the last month has shown that most opponents (here in this meta) can not take out a Tervigon and an Armourded Shell Tyrant with attached guard, both of whom are loitering behind cover and hopefully behind some Line-Of-Sight blocking terrain. Also, this army has the ability to deploy the second Tervigon on the board to start if the enemy has lots of long-range shooting, and let's face it... if the enemy can take out a Hive Tyrant, a Tyrant Guard, two Tervigons, and the gaunts that they spawned... all before turn 2... odds are it didn't matter what army you take because you are losing anyway.

Against Dark Eldar, possibly the worst matchup, going second without Night Fighting, again we're talking worst possible scenario, with smart deployment they are still going to struggle to kill off 18 Monsterous Creatures Wounds if deployment is smart. Let's say that 10% of all players here are at least Dark Eldar or Allied Dark Eldar (on the high side I think because so many play marines) and that 50% of the time they will get the first turn, and that 50% of that will NOT be Night Fighting. That means that roughly 2.5% of the time this would be an issue. The other 97.5% of the time, there is very low risk of getting tabled. Yes, it's possibly I will get the nightmare matchup on a table with no terrain, going second against dark eldar, without night fighting... but that is not the most likely scenario and if it does happen, then I could deploy more stuff on the board (Tervis, Trygon, Trygon prime, etc..)

Not trying to argue with you or discount your point, because I think it's a really good one. Just pointing out that in the lessons I've learned playing this army here over the last month, I've been at much lower risk of getting tabled than I thought I would be when I created the army. I think I'm now at the "playtest more and encounter more tournament matchups to see if it is a problem" stage. After all, this army is essentially the third evolution and it is trying to put less onto the table at the start because practical experience has shown that I have deployed too much in the last few versions of the army simply because I was in fear of getting tabled. I don't want to evolve into a less efficient build by ignoring experience after all.

-RF

[swarmy]

Dec 11, 2012 16:18:36 GMT rampagingfex said:

Thanks for the comments Swarmy. I'm not surprised this is the first comment....This is, after all, the number one concern I had when putting this army together. On paper I will admit it it does seem to be vulnerable to a quick tabling, but practical experience has shown otherwise.

Game play experience over the last month has shown that most opponents (here in this meta) can not take out a Tervigon and an Armourded Shell Tyrant with attached guard, both of whom are loitering behind cover and hopefully behind some Line-Of-Sight blocking terrain. Also, this army has the ability to deploy the second Tervigon on the board to start if the enemy has lots of long-range shooting, and let's face it... if the enemy can take out a Hive Tyrant, a Tyrant Guard, two Tervigons, and the gaunts that they spawned... all before turn 2... odds are it didn't matter what army you take because you are losing anyway.

Against Dark Eldar, possibly the worst matchup, going second without Night Fighting, again we're talking worst possible scenario, with smart deployment they are still going to struggle to kill off 18 Monsterous Creatures Wounds if deployment is smart. Let's say that 10% of all players here are at least Dark Eldar or Allied Dark Eldar (on the high side I think because so many play marines) and that 50% of the time they will get the first turn, and that 50% of that will NOT be Night Fighting. That means that roughly 2.5% of the time this would be an issue. The other 97.5% of the time, there is very low risk of getting tabled. Yes, it's possibly I will get the nightmare matchup on a table with no terrain, going second against dark eldar, without night fighting... but that is not the most likely scenario and if it does happen, then I could deploy more stuff on the board (Tervis, Trygon, Trygon prime, etc..)

Not trying to argue with you or discount your point, because I think it's a really good one. Just pointing out that in the lessons I've learned playing this army here over the last month, I've been at much lower risk of getting tabled than I thought I would be when I created the army. I think I'm now at the "playtest more and encounter more tournament matchups to see if it is a problem" stage. After all, this army is essentially the third evolution and it is trying to put less onto the table at the start because practical experience has shown that I have deployed too much in the last few versions of the army simply because I was in fear of getting tabled. I don't want to evolve into a less efficient build by ignoring experience after all.

-RF

On the other hand, if you have MC hiding spots in your terrain you are golden with this list . One other point to note is DE ignore night-fighting completely. I'm not sure if it's a paid upgrade or just something inherent but I've never seen it affect them. I'm speaking from experience with this because I've been a podding fiend lately and DE or flamer/screamer spam is always the worst case scenario. I haven't had the luxury of much LoS blocking terrain though. Mostly forests and some occasional short ruins chunks.

[tylertt]

Yeah my most played opponent is my friends DE army, and man do those venoms dish out some damage turn 1 on the MCs. Not to say that I think they would table you with that list, but they pose a very high threat factor.

Are you playing any matches in the near future? I'm actually very curious to how it turns out. Especially if against a DE list. In my experience, I've found my friend can hold the table very easily at the start of the game, but when the spores drop, it puts a huge damper into his tactics and allows for a very rapid advance I found.

And ignoring night-fighting is just a general rule of the DE unfortunately.

[rampagingfex]

ok, so DE are the worst matchup then. That's a pretty fluffy army-wide rule all things considered... Anyway, poison and ignores night fighting is pretty good. The last time I played a tournament game against DE was my swarm army with no pods, and I had a close defeat to the tournament winner. Actually, I was thinking that with this army basically ignoring the existence of Flyers. I figured that would be the bigger weakness, but with DE I may just have to play the metagame odds and hope to not face them. There is one serious tournament player here that goes to about half the tournaments with a DE/Eldar army. I'm probably going to have to get some games in against them and see if I can develop some tactics that work. Might have to find a way to get Hive Guard back in so I can at least keep those venoms back a bit (assuming at least one piece of line-of-sight blocking terrain exists that is).

Also... got a game scheduled on Friday against a Space Marine army. I'm not able to make the FLGS tournament on Saturday, but at least I'll play against my buddy who is going and will in effect get at least one game in against a tourny army. I'll try and take a bunch of pics and see what kind of battle report I can pull together.

-RF

[tylertt]

Awesome, looking forward to the batreps.

And please do fill us in when you play the DE/Eldar army. That is a batrep I am very excited to read, and see how this list plays out.

[rpricew]

What have you gained by outflanking the 2nd Tervigon? I've had poor luck with outflanking one of mine, as you don't get to cast any Blessings/Maledictions or Spawn Termagants the turn you come in. However, if you're running Codex Powers, I do realize that you can still cast Catalyst at the end of the movement phase.

Are you seeing a specific benefit?

[rampagingfex]

Only reason I would outflank a Tervigon is in the Hammer and Anvil deployment, in order to avoid some shooting and get him into the thick of it a little faster. Arriving on turn 2 and casting powers on turn 3 is essentially the same thing you get by walking, but if I can be further up the field and ignore some shooting then so much the better. the up field synapse can be useful too. In our tournaments they play each deployment once, so I can expect at least one game of Hammer and Anvil, and against someone who deploys well back the outflank can speed up the Tervigon by about 1-2 turns versus running.

Getting ready to start the batrep game now. I've got my camera ready. 2000 points verus IG horde with Chaos allies.

-RF

[Raven]

Looking forward to seeing the batrep, I'm working on a similar list myself.

[Jabberwocky]

Are you seriously playing the Terv with ZERO upgrades? It's one of our more cost efficient buys, assuming you want them or the gants to kill anything.

I guess if you just want the scoring though, then it's ok.

[rampagingfex]

Yeah, taking them both with no upgrades. Only purpose is to be hard to kill on turn one, and hopefully put some gaunts out. None of the upgrades help with getting them to survive turn one, and that is really what they are needed for. Points spend on them are just wasted because there is a good chance they will die on first or second turn.

-RF

[ranmafan]

Hm. Sounds feasible for a reserves list. The outflanking tervi is a bit of a risk though, but potentially an unpleasant surprise.

My one game with a DE army (which I've refused to fight ever since) killed 2 harpies, almost all my hive guards, and reduced my Tervigons to 3 wounds or less in the first turn with night fighting - there was nothing I could do; couldn't shoot anything.

Then his flier came in on turn two. I scored one hit with a hive guard, failed to glance it, then got tabled.

Yeah... I really don't like DE armies.

A reserves army sounds like a doable list, especially if enough spores land on target. I worry though - all it takes is for the opponent to cotton on to the Hive Tyrant's lynchpin role in bringing in reserves to blow it to smithereens. Especially if he has Dark Lances - he can just fill the Tyrant with one set of Splinter Rack shots (forcing you to sacrifice the guard or lose the tyrant), then Dark Lances to finish it off. With close to 48 Twin-linked poisoned shots per turn of shooting, if your DE friend decides to be unfriendly this list WILL die quite quickly. Even with cover saves.

And it's entirely feasible for the reserves to not come in till turn 4 - I've rolled enough 1s and 2s without Hive Commander to know.

[tylertt]

What style of armies have you battled with this list aside from the Ig/Chaos Allies?

[rampagingfex]

Last tournament I played against:
1- Space Marines (mixed force, some tanks, some infantry)
2- Chaos with IG allies (mech plague marines, vendettas, dragons, chimeras)
3- Sisters with GK (Bastion with cortaez and shooty stuff inside and on top, lots of sisters)

I have not yet played against DE, Eldar, or straight GK with this army. I did play against those with my previous horde-based army, but not yet with the drop pods. Also, I would enjoy playing against Orks, tau, etc... but the only armies at the last tournament with those armies were beginers and weren't too competative yet.

-RF