Back in business...or back to the drawing board?

[brianb9999]

My LGS is running its first RTT in months tomorrow, and I’ll be bringing my nids. I’m excited to finally get some models back on the table and roll some dice. I’ll be using a Nick Nanavati-inspired Kraken/Kronos dual battalion (no GSC). Missions are new ITC, 2000 pts.

Kraken Battalion

Swarmlord
Broodlord, resonance barb

16 Genestealers, 4 acid maw
16 Genestealers, 4 acid maw
16 Genestealers, 4 acid maw
30 hormagaunts

30 Gargoyles

Kronos Battalion

Neurothrope, warlord
Neurothrope

25 termagants
3 rippers
3 rippers

6 hive guard with Impaler cannons

Exocrine

2000 on the nose

I’m going all in on board control with this list. I like the gargoyles on paper to either flap up in someone’s face and wrap or simply move block, or absorb a charge if I don’t go first. Lots of movement shenanigans with opportunistic advance, metabolic overdrive, and Swarmy. I’ll try to post results Sunday and let you all know what worked and what didn’t!

[NidNoms]

nice, cant wait for the results of your battle.

[timcz]

Good luck! Hopefully organisers still have taken everything into consideration and have some good measures in place.

[irondreddknight]

Be sure to take your own dice 😉

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Bring hand sanitizer too. Terrain + the tables will be being touched by everyone. Good luck and have fun!

[brianb9999]

So I'm disappointed to say I finished the day at 1-2 with my last two games being mostly non-competitive. That is to say, I still like the list, and my matchups were less than ideal for really testing out my strategy. We had 16 people, nearly half of which are my own teammates. Through some dumb luck with matchups, I happened to play 3 of my teammates, 2 of which were the other FotHM players, both of which were running large quantities of genestealers (sigh). Anyway, here's the summary and my thoughts:

Game 1 vs Nids/GSC

Teammate #1...running Kraken bat with 2x20 stealers, Swarmlord, Broodlord, rippers, Leviathan bat with Prime, Neuro, Warrior blob, 5 zoanthropes, more rippers. GSC bat with Patriarch, Iconward, flamer bomb, brood bros and neophytes. I get first turn and we roll up vanguard deployment on ITC mission 1 (seize ground). I choose sappers, postman (catalyst neurothrope), and reaper. He took reaper, BEL, ground control. He screens his DZ with blips, which I get around by moving up the gargs and hive commandering them into his warriors after blasting a few of them off with my exocrine. I charge them just to tie up his shooting for a turn and move further into his DZ. I didn't get as far in as I wanted, though, and one of his stealer units can still escape around them. I didn't get a kill first turn, but I set up for board control/secondaries. I was really concerned when he sent the one stealer squad with catalyst into my lines where 2 of my stealer units, Swarmlord, Broodlord, and the exocrine were all sitting. He charged the forward stealer unit and killed 12/16, which was less than I anticipated. I think this was the pivotal moment in this game, because with the right charging and movement, he might be able to double fight into both of my stealer units, my characters, or even touch the exocrine. However, this did not come to be, so I counter-charge with stealers on my turn and continue to mostly dominate the midfield with Swarmy and Broodlord, eventually neutering most threats by turn 4 so I nearly max out on turns 5-6. 34-24 victory to me, fun tactical game (but those stealer vs stealer matchups sure do make my head hurt).

Game 2 vs Orks

So this is a matchup I've wanted for awhile, vs our resident Ork player. He runs a fairly regular competitive list but with double Goff bat instead of the usual Evil Sunz so he can get Ghazzy in there with 3 units of choppa boys, 3 units of Gretchin, and some tankbustas, weirdboyz, KFF, painboy. He also has the requisite death skull bat with the relic SAG, shoota boys, and more Gretchin. I get first turn again on ITC mission 2 and we roll up pointy DoW. He deploys most of the Goff detachments in a central bubble around the KFF with a bunch of Gretchin screening. Now I will say before going into this matchup, I know how to beat orks - it takes a combination of shooting and charging with a list like this and focusing down one unit at a time because charging multiple units is simply not feasible. I, however, forgot to consider the grot screen and just how much the KFF and painboy increase the durability of the Boyz. So I'm at first pretty happy because my hive guard and exocrine are both hidden from his SAG, so he has no good targets, and I get my forward stealers really close with OA and I hive commander my gargs so that I can cut off an entire half of the board from Da Jump. My plan was to force him to just kill everything in front of him by charging my gargs into his Gretchin and clogging his lines, and taking out one of the units of boyz with the stealers. So...the stealers massively whiffed, 16 of them killing about 6 orks. It was bad. So he fights back with all his Goff/Ghaz buffs, deletes the stealers, and fights again into the gargoyles. Needless to say, they also disappeared. That was pretty much the game right there as he just marches across the table and kills stuff.

I was already thinking about what I could have done differently, and I was at least happy that one of our top players was watching and said basically what I was thinking: just shove the gargoyles up and sit them in front of the blob, shoot down grots turn 1, and then pick him apart as he spreads out / has no grots left to eat my fire. I'd love to have this one back and see how it plays out if I don't hand him the game turn 1. we call it 41-11, and he goes on to take first overall, so I couldn't be that disappointed, right?

Game 3 vs Nids/GSC/Guard

So I played a practice game this week against this same guy, and it didn't go very well with me going first (think I messed up with my strategy...what else is new). And this time I go second. Ouch. He runs a Kraken bat with Swarmlord, Broodlord, 3x17 stealers (notice a theme here?), a GSC bat with Patriarch, magus, 3x brood bros, and a Guard supreme command with 2 psykers, company commander, Banehammer, and support vehicle. We rolled table quarters on ITC mission 3, and he deploys all his stealers across the front of his zone. I have no real choice but to deploy my stealers back and put all the gaunts on the front line to screen. He sent one unit of stealers plus the brood lord forward turn one and kills some chaff, plus just manages to see my hive guard with the tank and kills 3. He pulls his other 2 units back. I respond by wiping the stealers and Broolord, but can't do meaningful damage to Swarmlord in shooting, so I'm pretty much walled in. He drops reserves onto the two bonus objectives and just proceeds to pick me apart with the baneblade and throw stealers at me at will. I killed Swarmlord with some shooting before calling it in turn 3 or 4, 36-11 loss for me.

So overall, the list is still fun (I haven't run stealers for a while) and I think there's some play with the gargoyle screen. It's just harder to pull off vs GSC because of the blips and I massively failed in setting it up vs the orks. It does concern me that I don't really have an answer for the super-heavy, especially if I don't go first, but I don't anticipate seeing a list like that very often (ideally, I shoot down the support vehicle and cast the horror on the tank, but he has superior range). I would have liked to face at least one marine list, but oh well. I think I'll keep practicing with this list, maybe try to tinker a few things but not sure what. I also have to build my maleceptor so I could potentially use that (but it's more for my gaunt carpet list I'm going to try).

[afewveiws]

OOE is our most reliable way of dealing with super heavies. He is also a melee beast with charecter protection that may as well be married to swarmy. Since our list is melee centric and has both swarmy and shock troops to absorb overwatch... consider him as a really good model and potential anti-superheavy tech piece.

[No One]

You don't want a superheavy tech piece if you can't reliably win games before cutting 200 pts for something that isn't super impactful outside of SH. Because those aren't exactly meta.

[brianb9999]

Yeah tbh I do like Old One Eye but other than the Banehammer, the only other super heavies were 2 knights (not knight armies, single knights). And even a knight here and there wouldn’t be a problem for this list with all the bodies, so it was really just an unfortunate matchup and I didn’t get to go first.

[kazetanade]

Banehammer does not shoot out of LoS from memory, so that's pretty much your only play.

I played into Genestealers once before, I lost because of the acidic blood strategem. That might have been a thing for you too - preparing an HI to mess up GS pile ins might have been a thing too. Esp with multiple Neuro, which he will have issues killing with 3 or 4 Genestealers only (the goal is to force his GS blob to HI into several directions and be unable to focus strength anywhere) . The key here is definitely to ignore the LOW, kill the Genestealers, counter wrap his chaff with yours and manfight objectives.

Edit: HG shoot x2 = 24 shots 3+ =16H 3+ =10W 4++ =5FS d3 =10D, so the SL survives on average from full HG shooting (on a side note, in the mirror matchup, shooting into enemy HG does very little, though not relevant for your game). Shooting into the SL is a bit of a trap, as we all know his role is about done from T1. If you'd spent the two shooting activations to either decimate 1GS or to seriously wound 2 (how can you hide 3GS units on the board? I can only ever hide 1 properly), the game would have swung seriously hard into your favour, just like with the Orks matchup. The Banehammer is the red herring distraction Carnifex that can't do anything scary once you get the other units wrapped into combat (other than kill an Exo).

Edit2: I might have missed that part about losing 3HG, my bad. This list loses a lot when we lose HG numbers, so that's a big deal breaker.

[brianb9999]

He didn’t really hide his stealers, he sort of “feinted” with them? It’s a strategy I’ve considered if going first in the new ITC: line up all the stealers (or whatever your offensive threats are) up front, on the line. He then shot one forward and hive commandered it, while pulling the other two back into his DZ. With Swarmlord relatively safe, he could then easily send up another unit with opportunistic advance and hive commander, while being prepared to counterattack if I sent anything near him.

Now lining up neurothropes for a HI is clever and not something I had thought of. I’d have to go back and set up again but maybe I wouldn’t need to sacrifice so much chaff turn 1. Another thing I considered after the fact was maybe (gasp) using infestation nodes to deploy one unit of stealers just to give me some more room in my DZ and keep them safe from shooting. Admittedly, the terrain was a little sparse which did me no favors in trying to hide Swarmlord, hive guard, and the exo. The only other play I could think of would be maybe deep striking the gargoyles just for boats control purposes, but it seems such a risky proposition going second in this particular matchup.

[kazetanade]

May 25, 2020 10:08:46 GMT brianb9999 said:

He didn’t really hide his stealers, he sort of “feinted” with them? It’s a strategy I’ve considered if going first in the new ITC: line up all the stealers (or whatever your offensive threats are) up front, on the line. He then shot one forward and hive commandered it, while pulling the other two back into his DZ. With Swarmlord relatively safe, he could then easily send up another unit with opportunistic advance and hive commander, while being prepared to counterattack if I sent anything near him.

Now lining up neurothropes for a HI is clever and not something I had thought of. I’d have to go back and set up again but maybe I wouldn’t need to sacrifice so much chaff turn 1. Another thing I considered after the fact was maybe (gasp) using infestation nodes to deploy one unit of stealers just to give me some more room in my DZ and keep them safe from shooting. Admittedly, the terrain was a little sparse which did me no favors in trying to hide Swarmlord, hive guard, and the exo. The only other play I could think of would be maybe deep striking the gargoyles just for boats control purposes, but it seems such a risky proposition going second in this particular matchup.

(simplistic) what you could have done would look something like this:

H = Hormagants
G = Gargoyles
T = Termagants
N = Neurothropes

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH < Hormagant Line of First Wave Chaff
 N                                                           N
                 T                          G               
                 T                          G
                 T                          G

This first one is something I've seen Guardsmen do and I almost got caught on it before, imagine the H is a semicircle against a piece of non-ruins terrain (so one flank is covered) with the 1 unit of IG intersecting it down the middle. If I'd piled the charge on one side, I'd have to risk not killing the unit (the terrain block access to the unit from around). On the other side, I'd have to get close to a unit of Bullgryns and risk them attacking me (which will decimate the squad). I also did this to a Genestealer player back when we had the Sling + Scalpel available to us. I formed a V with 2 units of Gants (it's 40 Genestealers on T1, a single front line chaff isnt going to survive contact with either unit and the one that's left will be able to have free reign) , and had Broodlord, Swarmlord, a Flyrant, and 3 Neuros strung out around them, so that after the first charge and push in, he couldnt consolidate them properly into my army, and had halves stuck in the wrong places beating into Invuls. If you're using extremely cheap and smallish size of chaff (IG 10 men, or 15 man units if you had such things) which you dont mind losing, this is an ideal way to make sure a bulk of their power is wasted. 

If you wanted to maximize it and are fast enough on setup, you could also do something like this:

                    G
H   T   H   T   H   T   H   T
   N        G          G         N
   T   H   T   H   T   H   T   H
         G                  G

This one is a lot trickier because it messes up the enemy's attacking; if every model is space 1.5 inches (less than 2" so that Genestealer on old bases cant squeeze through you, not everyone is generous with bases like I am with mine on the 32mms haha) away from each other, and you intersperse them in a sort of weave set up, he'll have to dedicate his attacks into both chaff units at the same time to hurt either. This is because the model on the left can get say 4 guys into range of the first chaff unit; the 2nd guy doesnt reach the first chaff unit, he only reaches the 2nd chaff unit, so the guys using him for access can only hit the 2nd unit. Done properly, you make it impossible for him to dedicate the bulk of his attacks into any particular unit, meaning his *best case scenario kill* is burning 3cp to Fight again and kill both on the spot. If you throw in the Neurothropes, are extremely judicial about which model gets removed, and are spaced properly, it will be impossible for him to remove either unit even with Fight Twice, as the lesser bulk of his unit is forced to attack a fresh unit (ie a Neurothrope) and cannot pile in properly to dedicate enough attacks to bring it down. Even if he manages to kill 1 chaff unit, he's not in a position to Overrun away since you've got something in 3" of him, so he's forced to sit there and do nothing, or burn 3cp to kill a low impact unit. 

I've only ever been fed the 2nd one once, and I had no answer on how to break it; I had to accept that I wait for it to break naturally to move for objectives, or I accept losing the first unit to just break it apart so the 2nd unit can still do something. But most older Tyranid players should recognize it; it's the same helix weave we used to use to create a cover save for our entire army in 7th edition. I like the irony, but eh.

For yours, assuming you didnt lose all your chaff T1, it would have been a really good play to use the Gargoyles to grab the bonus objectives (or at least foist him off by taking up space and denying his deepstrike into range immediately). That forces him to use the Genestealer to remove you, which because they're so far back, he probably needs a Sling to get them there (meaning he cant sling them into you). That buys you another turn and where he has to fight on your terms (meaning his GS comes into range of YOUR guns, and you're in position to either contest each other at the begining of the turn or to steal it at the end of the turn). 

Sparse terrain is unfortunately a burden to any Nids list - I work on the assumption that I will only have enough to hide 1 unit + SL behind it, in any game, so all my lists are built around this potential handicap. Having HG, 3xGS, SL, and an Exo means that you will never have enough terrain to hide it all (unless you have some killer awesome mid-table LOS blockers on both table edges, which you do in standard ITC map games). So for me, I do this:

SETUP:
1x GS or 2xGS max; if there is no 2nd ruin, both are set up on further table edge. HG + SL takes up the cover closest to the middle of the board that's still defensible. Chaff is set up to defend against Deep Strikes, T1 charges, or just be out of range of anti-infantry guns. Flyrant will be in DS. Exocrene will be in a pod unless I cannot afford, in which case he is behind the central LOS blocker with GS, or he is toe in ruins and blocked as much as possible (but he's the expected T1 casualty if this happens - just accept it). Rippers DS in on T3 to grab objectives that Genestealers had to give up. 

[brianb9999]

Thanks for taking the time to write all this out, it's very helpful. Admittedly, I had considered the old-school cover save weave setup of editions past, as it forces the opponent to commit to everything. I like some combination of that plus the characters...quick math says you need to commit 6-8 stealers (depending on hitting on 2's vs 3's) to have an average shot at downing a neurothrope, which is nearly half the unit. I'm going to keep experimenting because I like my list, I just need to commit to making it work as attacker and defender.