RTT battle report 1/30: The Return of the Flyrant

[brianb9999]

So I got to test a new list concept I was working with at my LGS RTT this past weekend. With the changes to secondary scoring and the point changes, I began to develop a list that would be both fun to play and build around scoring the same list of 5-6 secondaries each game. Here's the list:

Leviathan Battalion

Swarmlord (warlord) Paroxysm, onslaught
Flyrant: Wings, 2x scything talons, murderous size, adrenal glands, toxin, psychic scream, catalyst
Flyrant: Wings, 2x scything talons, murderous size, adrenal glands, resonance barb, onslaught, catalyst

5 Warriors: 2x scything talons
4 Warriors: 2x scything talons
3x3 Rippers
3x3 Rippers
3x3 Rippers

5 Zoanthropes: Catalyst
5 Zoanthropes: The Horror
3 Tyrant guard: scything talons/rending claws
Lictor
Lictor

Tyrannofex: Acid spray
Tyrannofex: Acid spray

2000 points

So my rationale with this list was that I could reliably pick either engage or line breaker, banners, scramblers, or teleport homer, and WWSWF every single game regardless of what my opponent was playing. At first I hated the points increase on Zoanthropes, which I thought were already a little pricey for what they bring, but in this list, the point increase actually works in my favor. This list would actually be about 50 points over before the FAQ because of the drops on Flyrants, warriors, and the acidfex. So now the 2 Zoanthrope units and the Swarmlord (with his guard buddies) are my most expensive units for WWSWF, and I was mostly free to be aggressive with the smash Flyrants, killing opportunistic targets and overrunning to safety or behind enemy lines. Banners vs scramblers is pretty much a mission-specific pick, as is engage vs line breaker. So this was my brand new list idea, but how did it do overall?

First game was against one of the top local Demon players in mission 11. He brought Morty, 3 Keepers of secrets, Lord of Change (I think those were what he brought, not a Demon expert), and a smattering of Nurglings, Demonettes, and a unit of Flamers. I took WWSWF, Scramblers, and engage. He took WWSWF, engage, and bring it down. He won the rolloff and proceeded to crash into my lines. Unfortunately my biggest mistake was probably just deploying too closely so my acidfexes didn't have much of a chance to do much before they died, and my WWSWF units could only hold out so long. I was able to max engage and scramblers, but I also struggled on primaries due to his blitzkrieg and fought to score 10 primaries on my final turn. Final score ended up being 73-44 in favor of Demons. Not how I wanted to start, but I was encouraged by how easy it was to max engage and scramblers.

Second game was against a newer player bringing his Necrons. I was really hoping not to fight warrior spam because I still don't think I have an answer for it, but luckily he only had a squad of 20 and a squad of 10. He did have some beefier units like Skorpekh destroyers, spiders, and wraiths against which my Flyrants would be much more efficient. Mission was 31 (I think) Overrun, so I immediately picked banners, as well as engage and WWSWF. My opponent was still getting used to the rules, but did pretty well and played with the all obsec and 6" pregame move custom dynasty which is pretty competitve. He went first and moved up, which worked to my advantage because I was able to get both Flyrants into his lines and overrun 1 into his back corner after picking up the spiders. His biggest mistake was charging the night bringer right up the middle of the board unsupported, and I had made sure I game him enough of a bubble so he really couldn't get to me. I was able to kill him in one turn between smite, acid spray, and a few well-placed hits from the Swarmlord. Despite his early push, I killed everything he brought into my zone and harassed his backfield enough with my Flyrants to win the day. I actually struggled again with primary (he beat me 40-35, damn obsec everywhere), but I more than made up for it on secondaries, nearly maxing everything, while he only got 6 each for engage, abhor, and assassinate. Final score 77-58 after we talked it out, victory to the Nids.

Game 3 was against one of our local Space Wolf players. It was the first time I've played him as Nids, so I was looking forward to the matchup. Mission was 32, the table quarters one. I picked engage, scramblers, and WWSWF, he picked engage, bring it down, and something else I don't remember. I won the roll to go first this time, though I wasn't sure I wanted to. So I yolo'd a Flyrant directly into his lines, sending it against his Thunderwolves. A risky play, knowing they have a 4++ and all his units can intervene, so he brought his wulfen in to support the 4 Thunderwolves. I got 4 wounds onto the wolf unit and he rolled 1,1,2,3 as his saves. He rerolled a 1 into a 3, and like that, the wolves disappeared. He was able to get several wounds through fighting with the wulfen, but between 4++ and catalyst, the Flyrant only took 4 wounds and attacked again, picking up the wulfen. I then overran into the corner outside LOS. As the game went, I was able to secure the corner objectives keep him out of the middle, the Flyrant kept picking up units, and Logan Grimnar died in spectacular fashion, failing 9 of 11 3+ saves against my acidfex. My early play with the Flyrant was risky but paid off, and my opponent had some bad dice, so we called it after turn 4, 82-33 in my favor.

Overall, I came in 5th out of 18, and I was happy with my performance having not even gotten to practice with the list. My opponent from game 1 only beat me by 1 point on overall score 204-203. He came in second, only behind...another chaos player who brought Morty, Magnus, Great Unclean one, Lord of Change (I think) and some other ridiculous monstrosity. As far as tweaking the list, I'm not sure tyrant guard are really necessary - there's almost no outside LOS shooting to speak of in our meta right now, and I probably have enough infantry to perform actions. I could probably drop them, 1 unit of rippers, a warrior, and toxin sacs off the one flyrant to free up around 170 points. I could add venomthropes or a malecpetor for more protection, but I don't like having to group up to take advantage of their buffs. I do have another acidfex which would be hilarious, or a mawloc for backfield objective snagging. I'll think about it and any advice would be welcome.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Good showing and thanks for the fast write-up!

If you're going big, I'd argue for another acidfex to give you see more horde clearing power and a relatively durable unit that can camp on an objective.

[kazetanade]

I am a really big supporter of several 10 man and one 30 man Gaunt blocks that can be used for general purpose things - blocking, contesting objectives/tying down, screening, etc. That 30 man would have kept your AcidFexes safe in Game 1 because nothing in that army can break them open in one go and it's primarily psychic/melee only (I dont think the unit of Flamers could, and even if they could, only on T2).

There is one good answer for warrior spam - engage them and dont let them out of combat. Without SK in tow, they're not general great at melee with only 1A each on S4 ap0. If the enemy is not running a Royal Warden (most lists dont have them) then this is pretty much 0 risk. ESPECIALLY if they're running that obsec nonsense. Veil isnt a risk if when he veils he's not able to get a good positioning because you've already blocked out most of it. A unit of 30 gaunts, with only 1 gaunt touching that Warrior unit, will never die throughout the game since they cant get enough warriors in range to hit to do any meaningful damage, and can use the rest of its movement to eat up large swathes of land while your Flyrants go to town on his Skorpekh.

That play with your Flyrant into those space wolves is, not "risky"; it barely breaks even normally unless you're willing to burn 3cp for Fight Again. 5A 2+ 3+ = 4-5H, 3W, 1-2F on average. If you spend on the wound reroll, maybe 4W average for 2 dead. The remaining 3 would hit back with 4A? for 13A of 3+ to hit since SW, if they splurged they'd get exploding 6s to hit, so around 10-11H, 7-8W, 4F for flat, BEFORE the rest of his Heroic Intervention army comes in. The fact that you got 5H 5W and all fail is REALLY lucky. But that's a dice game I suppose.

If you had a 30 man Gaunt unit instead, or a 10/20 man gaunt unit, you could have double moved that unit up into his face instead, staying outside of his HI range and blocking his Run and Charge wolves from going anywhere for 1 turn, giving you the lead on Primaries. If you could do it for 2 turns with repeated units, you'd be 20+ points ahead of him, maybe 1 cp down, all tools still in play. I remember doing suicide blobs of Acolytes into Warriors back in 7th edition which kept him locked in his deployment zone for 4 turns, and I'd done it again recently vs the new DG by throwing Necron Wraiths at his face. I also suffered this myself multiple times early 8th with savvy Marine players using WS Impulsors to make sure I couldnt get out of my deployment zone without being harassed, or Salamander players doing almost the same with Impulsors giving me difficult ultimatum chocies between keeping his BGVs out of the game and giving up objectives, or getting objectives and losing my backline to BGVs.

I feel that having this T1 play is really crucial/powerful for us (since we seldom want to make the first move on the enemy unlike SM that want to alphastrike the enemy half the time) so that we have a good response to being forced to go first, otherwise we are forced into making incredibly ballsy and sometimes not very smart choices such as suicide rushing Flyrants into the enemy deployment because we have next to no choice.

Unfortunately, both the Maleceptor and the Malanthrope are going 2nd options - we want to survive the initial storm of fire. If you're facing a lot of shooting armies instead, then these options arent bad, but if you're a nicely mixed meta with a lot of aggressive T1 melee builds or closer to balanced armies, then I dont think Maleceptor/Malanthrope creates that big of a value for you. However, if you really dont want to play Gaunts, then I would second the Maleceptor, since that's an additional Smite Cast, not trivial to remove body that can also be annoying, that gives you some added utility. Much better than the Malanthrope who literally cannot do anything, or the mawloc whose role is fully occupied by the Flyrants/Lictors/Rippers in your army.

Unpopular opinion, but I like 6 man Zoeys. I dont find myself usually spreading Zoeys out a lot even as 5 man units, but I do find myself sending the Zoey units pretty far from one another in general to cover more ground. 6 man Zoeys will demand some fire attention at them due to d3+3 is an amount of damage most people will refuse to accept to take unless they have a lot of screens upfront. Of course, people still shoot at d3+d3 Zoeys also (even if they shouldnt), so it is superfluous for many people.

[hiveoverall]

Not bringing a warden (to fall back and do whatever you want on a unit) is the biggest mistake a neCRon (competitive) player can make. They are absolute auto includes.

I think if you get a chaos player dropping death hex on your zoeys then you feel bad for not bringing a kronos patrol to use deepest shadow to avoid getting your zoeys 3++ disabled by death hex. But I never play my Zoes myself, they just don’t fit in triple Dima lists, or really any other FW heavy list.
Léviathan zoanthropes With a kronos patrol is a good way to keep morty occupied though, even if he comes with soup and potentially death hex 

[kazetanade]

why would you bring a Royal Warden if you have only ONE unit that can benefit from it? It's literally only CORE, which means Tomb Blades (that dont survive combat most of the time) and Warriors only, and if you spend a Royal Warden just for them that unit starts to cost like 300+ points for a slow moving brick. Very inefficient, not very effective, not exactly a smart competitive choice. Royal Wardens are in no way auto includes unless you're running a marching CORE army.

[hiveoverall]

Ah yes you are right he only borought a squad of 20 and a squad of 10 warriors. I don't see why any necron player would bring so few, I think 20*2 is a minimum, and in that case the royal warden is great.
Most necron lists I have seen field 3*20 warriors, and then the warden is auto include.

[kazetanade]

Feb 2, 2021 9:31:21 GMT hiveoverall said:

Ah yes you are right he only borought a squad of 20 and a squad of 10 warriors. I don't see why any necron player would bring so few, I think 20*2 is a minimum, and in that case the royal warden is great.
Most necron lists I have seen field 3*20 warriors, and then the warden is auto include.

Because a unit of 5 Inceptors drops and auto-deletes one before Reanimation Protocol can proc. Likewise, a unit of Repentia charging in wipes, and a unit of 10 Frozen Stars Harleys goes in and auto wipes.

The current top tier armies all have access to reasonably standard and easy ways to wipe 20 warriors off the board in a single shooting attack, making bringing multiple 20s of them quite redundant since the ones at the front will eat a squad, die, the 2nd squad retaliates and then dies to the next thing, and the final squad is too immobile to exert pressure on the map. 

60 Warriors also completely fills up your deployment zone, and is EXTREMELY subsceptible to being move blocked. Add this to their pitiful 5" (6" with Overlord at least) movement a turn, they're not really going anywhere. They will likely kill whatever is move blocking them, but it will be a challenge to recover the game thereafter. 

Then there's the whole, 60 warriors is 780pts? A CCB is 150+, so 900+pts, add the RW then it's already 1k points in 3 units and 2 characters. Add SK and Chronomancer, it's 1500pts. It's expensive as a core and needs a lot more support to be strong, where are you going to find points to support it? And what secondaries are you scoring, exactly, with a slow ass moving army that doesnt take a punishment the way DG does? As long as the enemy has tools that can wipe 20 warriors in one go, this list is a difficult to win list. 

Or at least, that's my analysis of playing Necrons so far. My early renditions of 3x20 Warriors seldom if ever made it halfway across the table, you cant hide them, and you dont have enough points to work with once they're dead. 

EDIT: Before derail it any further, would like to point out that the goonhammer Necron top 5s lists mostly reflect my experiences as well. Mass Skorpekh, Lychguards, some Wraiths, SK, and C'tans, with 1x20 Warrior used as a damage bomb more often than not. I also draw a bit of inspiration from Siegler's list concepts in his War Room or youtube vids on Art of War, and saw his lists gradually move away from the mass Warriors into more pinpoint precision striking and abusing the character power in Necrons codex (in particular the SK himself is a pretty respectable beat stick, and his Novokh CCBs can hurt with 6A rerolling to wound.) I think you're from Australia if my memory serves, and I dont know the meta in Australia, so obviously what's competitive has a lot of different mileage based on armies being played around. 

[brianb9999]

Feb 1, 2021 14:18:57 GMT kazetanade said:

I am a really big supporter of several 10 man and one 30 man Gaunt blocks that can be used for general purpose things - blocking, contesting objectives/tying down, screening, etc. That 30 man would have kept your AcidFexes safe in Game 1 because nothing in that army can break them open in one go and it's primarily psychic/melee only (I dont think the unit of Flamers could, and even if they could, only on T2).

There is one good answer for warrior spam - engage them and dont let them out of combat. Without SK in tow, they're not general great at melee with only 1A each on S4 ap0. If the enemy is not running a Royal Warden (most lists dont have them) then this is pretty much 0 risk. ESPECIALLY if they're running that obsec nonsense. Veil isnt a risk if when he veils he's not able to get a good positioning because you've already blocked out most of it. A unit of 30 gaunts, with only 1 gaunt touching that Warrior unit, will never die throughout the game since they cant get enough warriors in range to hit to do any meaningful damage, and can use the rest of its movement to eat up large swathes of land while your Flyrants go to town on his Skorpekh.

To be honest, I had not thought of this during list creation, but it dawned on me after that first game that not only did I have no screen against a fast army like that, but I also didn't really have anything to eat smites. His first psychic phase was pretty bananas, getting most of his damage powers off on juicy targets despite my 7 denies and SITW. Later on, the psychic calmed down, but the damage was done. I like your point about gaunts not being a "second turn only" unit, since they can be played offensively or defensively, and I don't see these Demon lists going anywhere soon. I was always a fan of move-blocking with my gaunt carpet lists, and I'm definitely not against using them, I just never thought about it for this list.

Feb 1, 2021 14:18:57 GMT kazetanade said:

That play with your Flyrant into those space wolves is, not "risky"; it barely breaks even normally unless you're willing to burn 3cp for Fight Again. 5A 2+ 3+ = 4-5H, 3W, 1-2F on average. If you spend on the wound reroll, maybe 4W average for 2 dead. The remaining 3 would hit back with 4A? for 13A of 3+ to hit since SW, if they splurged they'd get exploding 6s to hit, so around 10-11H, 7-8W, 4F for flat, BEFORE the rest of his Heroic Intervention army comes in. The fact that you got 5H 5W and all fail is REALLY lucky. But that's a dice game I suppose.

To be fair, the Thunderwolves had axes...my quick calculations told me they weren't THAT damaging, but your point still stands.

So anyway, I like the list, but dropping the toxin, the tyrant guard, and a warrior frees up 142 points, 178 if I drop a ripper unit in addition. I found that the 2 rippers plus 2 lictors pretty much sealed engage for me, but I like to have that third unit as a sort of insurance sometimes. I guess the main question is: use those points on termagants, hormagaunts, or gargoyles? I think conventional wisdom says termagants since they're the cheapest and obsec, but also the slowest. If I'm using them to screen, then that's the best option, but probably the worst for pushing forwards, with gargoyles being the best because of their speed and footprint (excluding the fact that they're not obsec). Hormagaunts are probably the "compromise" choice. That said, what would be the best setup? 142 gets me 28 termagants, 23 hormagaunts, or 20 gargoyles; 178 gets me 35 termagants, 29 hormagaunts, or 25 gargoyles. I like the idea of 28 termagants (would have to be a blob since only 1 troop slot in that case), 35 termagants (25 + 10), 29 hormagaunts as 1 or 2 squads, or the 25 gargoyles (probably the unpopular choice).

[hiveoverall]

Feb 2, 2021 10:30:20 GMT kazetanade said:

Feb 2, 2021 9:31:21 GMT hiveoverall said:

Ah yes you are right he only borought a squad of 20 and a squad of 10 warriors. I don't see why any necron player would bring so few, I think 20*2 is a minimum, and in that case the royal warden is great.
Most necron lists I have seen field 3*20 warriors, and then the warden is auto include.

Because a unit of 5 Inceptors drops and auto-deletes one before Reanimation Protocol can proc. Likewise, a unit of Repentia charging in wipes, and a unit of 10 Frozen Stars Harleys goes in

EDIT: Before derail it any further,

I created a topic in the "other army" section, and tagged you there (did it work ?) so as not to derail this one further, but I like your views on necron builds, so we can continu this there (if you have the time, if not well I understand, peace .

Brian, a dima instead of one of the flyrants would enable a tyranofex to get a 5++ (which is actually pretty sweet with the 6+++ leviathan, if the dices are a bit with you).

For your gaunt dilemma, I think more is better when you run them with the 6+++, so I would not look at horma s or gargoyles (though a unit of gargoyles with swarmy can try move blocking tricks, which opponents dont expect if you don't run kraken)

[mattblowers]

Grats! A winning record. Well done.

[kazetanade]

I'm partial against gargs PURELY because of how finicky they are to move and position. Otherwise, I think gargs are really good. Helps you score T1 Enagage (the main reason I was not taking EoAF as my main secondary for Nids, getting the first 3pts per turn is stupidly unnecessarily hard without both SL and MO)

The composition of models is a rough question, but in general I think more units is a bit more useful than one big unit. I'd work with 10/18 first before going one unit of 28, but both works so its down to preference and plan.

[brianb9999]

Feb 2, 2021 20:02:02 GMT kazetanade said:

I'm partial against gargs PURELY because of how finicky they are to move and position. Otherwise, I think gargs are really good. Helps you score T1 Enagage (the main reason I was not taking EoAF as my main secondary for Nids, getting the first 3pts per turn is stupidly unnecessarily hard without both SL and MO)

The composition of models is a rough question, but in general I think more units is a bit more useful than one big unit. I'd work with 10/18 first before going one unit of 28, but both works so its down to preference and plan.

I thought I was the only one who liked gargoyles for their first turn movement haha. Still wish I could get more bodies but maybe a 10/15 split would work for screening/secondaries.

Feb 2, 2021 16:12:02 GMT hiveoverall said:

[quote author="kazetanade" source="/post/997069/thread" timestamp="1612261820"

Brian, a dima instead of one of the flyrants would enable a tyranofex to get a 5++ (which is actually pretty sweet with the 6+++ leviathan, if the dices are a bit with you).

For your gaunt dilemma, I think more is better when you run them with the 6+++, so I would not look at horma s or gargoyles (though a unit of gargoyles with swarmy can try move blocking tricks, which opponents dont expect if you don't run kraken)

Unfortunately I have no access to FW outside of a malanthrope. I know they're great these days, but I just don't have the time/desire/$$ to get them at the moment.