2k Kraken/Kronos varient for GT

[zimko]

My first Major of this year is this weekend (120 players, 5 rounds) at the Maryland Open. I haven't had any test games since my last GT so I'm sticking with the last list we talked about.

Kraken Battalion
- Broodlord: Res Barb, Onslaught, Warlord - 125
- The Swarmlord: Catalyst, Paroxysm - 270
- Hormagaunts x10 - 60
- Termagants x30 w/ Devourers - 210
- Termagants x20 w/ Devourers - 140
- Lictor - 37
- 2 Pyrovores - 56
- Dimachaeron - 230

Kronos Patrol
- Neurothrope: Symbiostorm - 95
- Hormagaunts x10 - 60
- Hive Guard x6: Enhanced Resistance - 270
- Barbed Hierodule: Dermic Symbiosis - 275
- Exocrine - 170

The terrain at the event includes 8 obscuring ruins, 2 obstacles that are just small walls with windows, and a 'crater' thing in the middle that counts as Dense Cover.

Missions are:
Mission ONE: Retrieval Mission – Page 38 (hammer and anvil, 6 objectives, hold 1 or hold 2, Minimum Losses)
Mission TWO: Sweep And Clear – Page 52 (table quarters, 5 objectives, hold 1 or hold 2, Direct Assault) ALSO: Once you own an objective at the end of a Command phase including turn 1, then you continue to own that objective even if you leave it.
Mission THREE: Surround and Destroy – Page 44 (dawn of war, 6 objectives, hold 1 or hold 2, Surround Them)
Mission FOUR: Vital Intelligence – Page 42 (vanguard deployment, 6 objectives with 4 of them in no mans, hold 2 or hold 3, Data Intercept) ALSO: Same as Sweep and Clear where you hold objectives forever after leaving them until enemy takes it.
Mission FIVE: Scorched Earth – Page 40 (dawn of war, 6 objectives, hold 1 or hold 2, Raze)

In summary, only 1 game where you must hold 2 for 5 points or 3 for 10 points. And every mission has 6 objectives except for 1 which has 5. Also, 2 missions allow you to continue to control an objective after leaving it. And 2 Dawn of War maps. The other 3 allow for deploying very far from your opponent if you wish, which suits me fine.

Depending on matchup, the Vital Intelligence mission could allow for easy psychic secondary points since it is vanguard deployment. I can hide the broodlord in the top left corner and just keep casting within 6" of the opponent's edge while staying out of LOS. (each corner will have an obscuring ruin).

The missions specific secondaries are all risky and matchup dependant. I'm probably best sticking to my engage/scramblers/while we stand or grind them down plan.

[zimko]

So far I am 2 and 1 going into day 2. I beat Dark Angels and Aeldari soup (liquifiers, dark reapers and night spinners). I lost to Ad mech on Dawn of War deployment and him winning the roll off for first turn. Basically nothing I could do even with him making a lot of mistakes. I managed to get 74 points to his 79 due to those mistakes but it's frustrating losing due to matchup and first turn roll off.

[zimko]

Finished 3 and 2. Both losses to Ad Mech on Dawn of War deployment and the Ad Mech player went first. Despite that, I only lost by 2 in the last game (88 to 86) and 5 in the other (79 to 74). I ended up winning an award called 'Grinder' for having the lowest difference in scores between all my games so that was neat.

Overall thoughts: I wouldn't change my list at all. I just hate Ad Mech. If they didn't have a free scout move before the game then I could at least hide my important units on turn 1, but thanks to that move, nothing is safe. I faced a meta Drukhari list (Sean's list from Dallas open that won), a somewhat meta Dark Angel's list and a good Death Guard list. All those games were close uphill battles but I won them.

I think I'm done playing for a while until we get a codex. I have a Major in August but that's it on my future schedule atm.

[tomb]

Congrats on your results, it's a tough meta out there.

I like your list and haven't played my Nids for a while.

Please could I ask for a Tactica on how your list operates?

Much appreciated.
Tomb

[gublyb]

Hey so this seems like a good place to ask something I see in a lot of Kraken/Kronos lists.

Why are the termagant packs put into the Kraken section and not the Kronos section? I would have thought that re-rolling 1s and exploding 6s would be most efficient on the 90 shots a full unit gives? Everyone seems to put it into Kraken though so I'm sure there's something I'm missing. In your opinion, why do the Termagants generate more value in Kraken rather than in Kronos?

[Bohxim]

I believe its because on top of their shooting, their goal is to get and hold objectives. Plus they need to field enough troops into their kraken detachment.
If they need to move out to objectives or get closer to use their guns (relatively short ranged), they lose their kronos buff anyways. And they likely won't have many surviving long enough to fully make use of the kronos buff when it is their turn to shoot again. So I suppose its better to put them in kraken to enable them to get onto objectives or a more frontal position earlier.

[gublyb]

Hey thanks that makes a lot of sense. I just ran some basic math and the extra firepower for re-roll 1s and extra hit 6s vs without is not exactly gigantic.

[No One]

They're also assault weapons, so you can advance and shoot (onslaught ideal to remove the -1, but not absolutely necessary) with Kraken and possibly opportunistic as well for an extra~4-12" threat range. Kronos is only useful for symbiostorm: which is good, but will generally have other units it can go on for similar or better impact (i.e. hive guard/exo). The rr 1s is basically never going to come up.

[zimko]

All of the above is correct. I start them on the table in most of my games, either hiding behind large buildings or screening the Hive Guard against fast melee. Then when the opportunity arrises, I will Opportunistic Advance them up to 18" onto an objective, and sometimes cast Onslaught on them so they can shoot stuff effectively. Then my opponent has 20 to 30 ob. sec bodies to deal with in addition to whatever damage they did.

For Tactics I'll go over each game here:

Game 1 vs Dark Angels with Blade Guard, Terminators and bikes.

He took secondaries that basically involve him not needing to move outside his deployment zone except for scramblers which he had 2 small deep striking infantry units for. The deployment was Hammer and Anvil.

My list has great candidates for While We Stand We Fight against a list like this that doesn't have a lot of long range shooting. My WWSWF units are Hive Guard, Swarmlord and Barbed Hierodule. So I took that secondary, along with Scramblers and Engage.

In this game, the shooting provided by the Devgants was useless, so I didn't bother putting them in reserves. Instead, I used them to screen out my entire half of the board from his deep strikers until turn 3 when he was forced to bring them down way outside my deployment zone. This effectively stopped him from getting Scramblers. I sacrificed the Swarmlord for my WWSWF by having him sit in melee with a bunch of Blade Guard for 3 turns while a few Termagants held the objective they were fighting on.

For target priority against a list like this, you almost always want to remove mobility first, killy stuff second. In this case, the bikes match both categories because they all have meltas. So I focused all my shooting on them and used the Dimachaeron to jump over models and kill Ezekial.

After the bikes were dead it was a slow grindy game where I just kept scoring points. Final score was 88 to 70.

Game 2 vs Aeldari Soup with 3 Liquifier Raiders, 1 Raider with Drazhar and Incubi, 1 Archon, 1 Falcon, 2 Night Spinner and 3x3 Dark Reapers and some character that has a 3 damage gun and is expensive enough to be a WWSWF candidate.

I think I played my best game here. It was 'Sweep and Clear' mission with 1 objective in the middle and 1 in each corner (5 total) and the special secondary was 'Direct Assault' which gave you 3 points for just holding the middle objective at the end of YOUR turn. We both took that secondary. He took WWSWF while I took Grind them Down. And I took Engage while he took Domination (which makes sense if you plan to take the middle objective every turn).

So with his soup army, he only had 4 CP at the start of the game. He deployed very aggressively hoping to get first turn and I deployed very defensively knowing how far those liquifiers can reach. I ended up winning the roll for first turn so he spends ALL 4 of his CP to redeploy 3 Drukhari units and 3 Aeldari units. He ends up castling in the corner around his Night Spinners to prevent my Dima from being able to kill them but he has to leave 1 Raider out, behind obscuring but just close enough that if I move my Hive Guard forward I can shoot it.

So that's what I do. I move the Hive Guard out of their corner ruin, but still decently well protected by obscuring, give them onslaught and shoot at the Raider. I get some good rolls and manage to kill it in 1 volley. Then I fire a second volley to kill the Kablites that popped out (I wanted the guarentee kill and 1 kablite already died while disembarking while the Incubi had a better save). This meant I had 2 kills for Grind Them Down. I sent 1 unit of 10 Hormagaunts onto the middle objective giving me Direct Assault and as a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. My Pyrovores deployed on the right side line, so they jsut moved forward along the board edge to get my engage, while my other hormagaunts moved into the left table quarter. using a double move to reach the objective. That was it for turn 1. Everything else I had stayed hidden as best I could. The Termagants were a little exposed because there's just too many to hide.

The Dima moved a little closer to the right side but far enough back that if he wanted to shoot the Dima with Nightspinner or Dark Lances, then he would have to come inside the range of the Hive Guard. And since Night Spinners are his 'while we stand, we fight' unit, he was not going to do that.

For his turn, he used a strat on 1 liquifier boat to give it a 22" move/advance, getting it onto the middle objective for Direct Assault points. He moved a Falcon (with 2 units of Dark Reaper in it) to the right side objective where I had nothing nearby except very slow Pyrovores who weren't close enough to do anything. Another Liquifier boat advanced and moved just close enough to the middle objective to be able to deploy models ON the objective if/when that Raider died. (It's also important to note here that the middle objective was inside an area that the TO said was 'trees', despite it being completely flat. They wanted Dense Cover in the middle of the table.). Anyway, 1 boat of Liquifiers liquified the Hormagaunts. The Night Spinners and other unit of Liquifiers shot at my 30man Devgant blobbed and killed all except 2. Those 2 living was huge though because it meant I scored 3 points for 'Grind them down'. He scored 3 for Domination and Direct Assault.

So at this point, I'm thinking about the scores. We can continuesly trade Direct Assault with each other, but doing that he would max Direct Assault and Domination while I would not quite max Engage but max Direct Assault. And assuming I don't kill his 'WWSWF' targets then he would win. So to stop this gravy train, I need to take the middle and kill as much of his Drukhari as I can.

With that in mind... I used Opportunistic Advance on my 20man Devgants and moved them onto the middle objective, taking up as much real estate as I could so that his Wracks couldn't deploy directly onto the objective (or at least, not many of them could). I then positioned my Broodlord and Neurothrope inside a building, using the windows to make a different Raider the nearest visible target for each of them so that their smites would each hit a different Raider. I wanted to do this so that each Raider was reduced to 9 or fewer wounds, meaning if I boost the Exocrine's damage to 3 then he could kill each Raider with only 3 wounds instead of 4 or 5. I smited the 2 Raiders. I failed one of the smites, and used a CP reroll to make it successful. My opponent looked very confused by this . At the same time, I moved the Dima directly towards the Falcon and moved the Swarmlord close enough to him to give him Hive Commander. I gave the Devgants Onslaught and the Exocrine Symbiostorm.

Ok, then came the fun part. With perfectly average rolls, the Exocrine killed BOTH Raiders. He deployed his Succubus (did I mention he had a succubus? well he did) and Drazhar within 'heroic intervention' range of my Devgants, but made sure to deploy all the Wracks closer to the devgants so that I couldn't shoot the characters. The Incubi from last turn were also right behind the characters. They were pretty well covered, and I was fine with that because I had a plan to prevent the heroic intervention. I split fired the Devgants into a full unit of wracks and a weakened unit that lost a couple models from disembarking. I wiped 1 unit but 1 Wrack remained in the other. This was perfect. I used the Hive Guard to shoot and kill the Falcon... also perfect. He didn't lose any Dark Reaper from disembarking, but he deployed 1 unit on the objective and the other as far away as he could so that I couldn't multi-charge them with the Dima... a wise move. The Swarmlord ordered the Dima over to the Dark Reapers. I shot with the Barbed Hierodule to kill another unit of Wracks, then double-shot the Devgants to kill the rest of the Wracks except for that 1 lone Wrack.

And now for the biggest reason why I gave the Devgants Onslaught... I charged that 1 lone Wrack and used the Charge move to get all my Devgants outside of 'Heroic Intervention' range of the Succubus and Drazhar while still being on the objective. I killed the Wrack but that didn't really matter, as long as I still had 20 obsec bodies on the objective and he only had 1 more boat of Liquifiers for me to deal with. The Dima charged the 1 unit of Dark Reapers on his right side Objective and killed them, and consolidated into the other unit of Dark Reapers.

While all this was happening, my Lictor arrived just outside his deployment zone, but close enough to charge the Night Spinners. He successfully charged the Night Spinners with a reroll and piled-in/consolidated to get both of them in engagement range.

All of this resulted in my opponent only getting 5 points for Primary on his Turn 2. Both Night Spinners were silenced for this turn, 1 unit of Dark Reapers couldn't shoot, another was dead. And 4 units of Liquifier Wracks were dead. So all he had to shoot with this turn was 1 unit of Dark Reapers, 1 Raider with 4 Liquifiers and a Dark Lance and his WWSWF character.

So here's what he did. He Fell Back with the Dark Reapers onto the objective by the Dima. He then moved up with the Liquifier boat towards the middle objective, but fired backwards at the Dima. His 1 good unit of Dark Reapers also fired at the Dima and managed to kill it. As extra insurance, he also moved the Archon towards the Dima but didn't need him. The Night Spinners fell back and the WWSWF character killed the Lictor. The Incubi, Drazhar and Succubus killed the Devgants on the middle objective, giving him Direct Assault and Domination again.

My next turn... the Pyrovores lumbering movement continues towards the right side objective where the Dima just died, but now they're close enough to shoot and charge the Dark Reapers that are on the objective. THEY DID IT. They shot and killed 2 of the Dark Reapers, then charged and killed the last 1, TAKING the objective and denying my opponent Primary points. Hell ya Pyrovores.

Anyway, all my devgants are dead. The only obsec I still have are 10 Hormagaunts, and since you can leave and objective and still hold it in this mission, I send them to the middle to give me Direct Assault again. But I also send the Barbed Hierodule, The Broodlord and the Swarmlord. It's time for all out assault. Everything is in the middle and there's no more stuff coming. The Exocrine moves into the top left Table Quarter to give me Engage (since I sent the Hormagaunts to the middle) but I didn't spend the CP to make him not count as moving, so he doesn't do much this turn. The Barbed Hierodule shoots and kills the Incubi. Drazhar is still protected by the Raider but the Succubus is not, so I take the opportunity to shoot the Hive Guard at her and killed her. The Swarmlord charges the Raider and kills it. The Wracks get out but with the Hormagaunts there I still hold the objective.

On his turn, he sees an opportunity to kill some Hive Guard with Wracks, so he advanced 1 unit to the Hive Guard a kills a few of them. The Night Spinners kill the Hormagaunts. He uses Drazhar to charge and kill both the Broodlord and the Swarmlord (damn he hurts). The Archon kill the Pyrovores, taking back that objective. The other Liqufier unit shoot at the Barbed Hierodule but he shrugs it off, taking only 4 damage. The 1 remaining unit of Dark Reapers shoot at him too but he only takes 3 damage. With that, he owns the middle objective again, getting Direct Assault and Domination.

The Barbed Hierodule and Exocrine hoot and kill the Wracks and Drazhar, leaving him with nothing near the middle objective. So I finally stop him from getting Direct Assault and Domination for a turn. The Hive Guard shoot at the Archon, with symbiostorm casted on them, and manage to kill him but since I had no units on it, he still owned the objective. I double shot with the Hive Guard to kill the remaining Dark Reapers.

So on turn 4, he can't get Domination or Direct Assault so he just moves up the Night Spinners to take the middle on turn 5. He shoots and kills the Hive Guard.
On turn 5, he advanced the Night Spinners onto the middle objective, taking it and giving him 15 for primary but that still only results in 30 total for Primary while I had 10 every turn for 40. Also, stopping Domination and Direct Assault for that 1 turn meant he lost 6 points there. Resulting in 84 total points. I had 11 for Engage, 15 for Grind Them Down and 15 for Direct Assault, resulting in 91 points.

[zimko]

Game 3 vs Admech: 3 Skorpius, 10 Corpuscarii, 2 units of 9 Raiders, 2 Lascannon walkers, Cawl, Manipulos, 2x4 Breachers, Servitors,  and a Telemon.

My secondaries were Engage, WWSWF and Scramblers. He took Engage, Thing the Ranks and WWSWF (the Telemon, 1 Skorpius and Cawl).
 
This guy ended up going 5 and 0 in the tournament btw. The mission had Dawn of War deployment, so no way I can outrange anything and very few ways to hide from units that can advance and shoot heavy weapons and get a pre-game move. I try anyway and I have everything in spots I think are pretty secure. Hopefully I win first turn right?

Nope.

He goes first. And with a pregame move plus advance, a unit of 9 Raiders is able to shoot at the Swarmlord. He uses wrath of mars and some +1 to hit thing and manages to roll 4 6s to wound, dealing 8 mortal wounds, and forces me to make enough saves to lose the other 4. So down goes Swarmlord on turn 1. The Dima gets shot at by 4 Breachers and 4 Lascannons and Telemon and somehow lives with 4 wounds. The other Raiders move on my other flank and charge Hormagaunts that were sitting on an objective, killing them. So that was a huge feels bad. I really hope the new Admech codex removes their ability to move before the game. Just remove that so I can at least have a way to hide on turn 1.

Anyway, I kill all the Raiders on one side with Devgants, and the other side with the Exocrine (+1 damage). I double move some Hormagaunts to give me engage and scramblers in the middle. I keep my Barbed Hierodule behind a corner ruin with are tall enough and wide enough to block LOS to him. I peak the tip of his talon out just enough to shoot some Breachers. The Hive Guard shoot and kill the unit he had on his right side objective, thereby forcing him to only get 5 points for Primary.

On his turn he kills the Dima (who was too slow to get anywhere useful) and some Devgants. He removes everything I have on my right side objective, giving me only 5 points for primary.

On my turn, I finish off everything he has his right side table quarter and take the objective with a Lictor (also deploying scramblers).

On his turn 3, he does the same to my right side objective, bringing in Servitors to hold the objective. At this point, Telemon has settled himself onto one of the middle objectives and manage to take some shots at the Exocrine, But the Exocrine shrugs off the attack. However, he forgot to move one of his Skorpius tanks a few inches into his right side table quarter, so he missed getting engage that turn. (He was making a lot of small mistakes like this, he was not playing a good game but it didn't matter because this matchup is just so lopsided) I capitalized on every mistake I could, but I couldn't kill Telemon. I did however kill the Skorpius that was WWSWF. I also managed to get 40 points on primary but only 4 pointso n Egnage to his 9 points on engage. And that was the only difference in our score. 79 to 74. He won by 5. 

Game 4 vs Death Guard: His list wasn't in BCP so off memory he had... 2 big units of Blightlords, 1 Contemptor Dread (these were his WWSWF units), 2 units of plague marines, 4 units of poxwalkers, 3 chaos spawns and some characters that buffed the Blightlords (one turned off rerolls, another made enemy units fight last, another cast powers like giving him -1 to hit... stuff like that). 

This mission was one of those missions where you have to hold 3 to get 10 points or 2 for 5 points. It was vanguard deployment (triangles) and 1 objective in each of our deployments and 4 objectives along a line down the middle of no-mans land.

I took WWSWF again because he had basically no long range shooting and my usual Engage and Scramblers.. He also took WWSWF. He took the mission secondary which was basically 'perform an action on an objective, score points in your command phase equal to number of objectives held'. And he took Engage.

I put the 20man devgant unit in reserves, he had no reserves. 

He won first turn. He deployed a unit of Blightlords on each flank, hoping to just sit on as many objectives as he could. His contemptor has an effective 51" threat range, but my Dima has a 42" potential movement before charging, so he decided to deploy the dread way back because he didn't want to give up WWSWF points since it would probably be a close game. So the all the things moved forward, but only 1 poxwalker unit was fast enough to reach an objective on my left side. A Blightlord blob plus 3 characters were right behind those poxwalkers. 

On my first turn, I took the opportunity to fire the Hierodule, Exocrine and Hive Guard into the Blightlords on my left flank (they were the closest but had the most character support). They had -1 to hit from miasma. I killed 3 or 4. I moved Hormagunts onto the left corner objective, out of the reach of his units and behind LOS. I also advanced my 30man blob of Devgants to give them all LOS to the 10 poxwalkers on an objective. They shot and wiped that unit. I left the right flank alone except for moving the Pyrovores into that table quarter for Engage. He wasn't yet on any of those objectives but a unit of Blightlords was about 5" away from one of them so I didn't want to sacrifice units taking them for no reason. I scrambled in my deployment zone. I also moved my Kronos Hormagaunts onto the middle objective that the Blightlord/character blob was moving towards (and therefore close enough to use the Kronos Stratagem on miasma).

On his turn 2, he scores 0 for primary and 1 for the mission secondary. The blightlord blobs settled in on their chosen middle objectives. He spreads the chaos spawns around his deployment to deny my Lictor any place to come in. Some Poxwalkers move onto a forth objective in the right side corner. The contemptor remained safe out of sight since I was still too far away with all my valuable targets (I made sure the Barbed Hierodule was exactly 52" away, just outside his threat range) He attempts miasma and I use the Kronos strat on it. But he rolled a 6 and got it off anyway. He doesn't have anything to shoot except the Kronos horms and the 30 devgants. He kills all the Horms and kills about half the devgants.

On my turn 2, I score 5 for primary. So at this point, he's sitting on 4 objectives. 2 of them have Blightlords on them, so there's no way I can completely remove them. 1 Objective has 10 poxwalkers on it in the right side corner. That one I could remove with the 20 devgants I have in reserves, but they would die the following turn to blightlords. The other objective he owns is the objective inside his deployment zone. That one only had 5 plague marins and tallyman on it (tallyman is the one doing the action to get him points equal to the number of objectives he owns). Since the Blightlords near me have the aura to turn off rerolls, I decide that the Dima will be wasted on them. So I double advance and launch the dima towards his back objective with the Plague Marines and Tallyman. I Bring in the 20 devgants to kill the Poxwalkers on the right side objective. I move the Swarmlord up to charge the large Blightlord blob (that I already weakend to 7 models) and he's close enough to use Hive Commander on the Dima. I moved the 15 remaining devgants onto the top left objective and had them do scramblers, and moved the 10 hormagaunts out to get ready to charge a chaos spawn, and use their 6" pile-in and 6" consolidate to get within range of the objective that the Blightlords were currently sitting on (they didn't have enough room to get on the objective until some of the blightlords are killed, so I'm using their pile-in tricks to give me extra movement in the fight phase after some blightlords are dead hopefully). In psychic, I get Onslaught on Dima and killed 1.5 blightlords with smites. I also used Catalyst on the Dima. I fired everything into those blightlords and reduce them to 3 models. The 20 devgants wiped out the poxwalkers on the right side objective. I charged with Swarmlord and reduced them to 2 models. The hormagaunts managed to get within range but my opponent used pile-in to get 1 blightlord within engagement of the Hormagaunts and put all their attacks into them instead of Swarmlord. They and the Chaos Spawn managed to wipe the hormagaunts, so he still owned that objective. The Dima, put all his attacks into the plaguemarines but only killed 4. But he failed his strength check and I ate the last marine, allowing me to contest his home objective.

On his turn 3, he scored 5 for primary and 2 for the mission secondary. He now has a fully buffed Dima on his home objective and close to his contemptor dread. And all his Blightlords are too far forward to do anything about it. So he moves a poxwalker unit onto the objective and moves 5 plaguemarines and 3 characters back towards the Dima to try and stop it from killing the contemptor. The contemptor shoots the dima but barely scratches it. The plaguemarines are out of range to use their grenades so they barely scratch him. The still healthy blighlord blob spreads themselves out so they are on 2 objectives, and shoot and kill the 20 devgants. My pyrovores though are still in that table quarter. The beefy characters shoot and charge the swarmlord, killing him. He fell back with the 2 Blightlords so he could shoot the Swarmlord with those nasty flamers that the characters have. 

On my turn 3, his character have no look out sir protection so I wipe them out. I also finish off those blight lords. The Dima takes his time pulling the contemptor apart, piece by piece. At this point, my opponent has lost 10 points from WWSWF. I can't do anything about the large Blightlord blob on the 2 objectives that they are on so he's going to get 10 points for primary with them and the poxwalker on his back objective. But I continue to get plenty of engage points and I finish scramblers. So win 66 to 59.

Game 5 vs Admech: 3 skorpius, 2 bombers, 4 lascannon chickenwalkers, 2 duneriders, 1 with jazz-hand priests and 1 with melee-jazz-hand priests. Another unit of jazz-hand priests in reserves. All Stygiies so -1 to hit from outside 12" and pre-game movement.

Oh boy admech on Dawn of War deployment again. And he wins first turn. Sigh.

Funny thing about this game is we both took the exact same secondaries: WWSWF, Engage and Scramblers. We both scored 15 for WWSWF, we both scored 10 for Scramblers. The difference maker was he scored 8 for Engage and I scored 6.

How did that happen? Well, he was afraid of my shooting. Rightfully so. If a Skorpius got in range I'd do everything in my power to kill it. He deployed defensively in his left corner while I deployed defensively in my left corner.

However... he won first turn so naturally a dunerider full jazz-hands pre-game moved towards me, then deployed 3 and advanced 6+d6. They shot and killed the Exocrine. The lascannons reduced my Dima to 2 wounds. The bombers moved into my right corner, dropping bombs on the 20 devgants I had there killing 12 and reducing the movement on my Hormgaunts that were in that corner.

On my turn, my devgants moved out and killed the jazz-hands, and the Dima used Swarmlord and Advance and Onslaught to move his degraded butt out and kill the dunerider, and giving me Engage after charge/consolidation movement. I used Catalyst on the Swarmlord since he was the most vulnerable of my WWSWF targets. (The Barbed Hierodule was tucked away beind the corner L ruins that were tall enough to block LOS for him.) The Hive Guard and Barbed Hierodule destroy a Bomber and damage the other. 

On his turn 2 he scores 10, the bomber moves back to his characters and gets repaired for 5 damage. 2 lascannon chicken walkers manage to get LOS of the Hierodule but fail to damage him. He shoots the skorpiuses at Hive Guard and kills 1, wounding a 2nd. (thank you enhanced resistance)

On my turn 2 I score 10. I move the devgants towards his 5 skitarri holding his right side objective. I deploy the Lictor on my left side so zone out his reserved jazz-hands from arriving close to me. The skitarii are inside LOS blocking ruins, so I move only 4 of my devgants into LOS of them. Those 4 shoot and kill 3. I give them onslaught so they can charge. I charge the Skitarri, wiping them out in melee and use Overrun to move far enough back so that his jazz-hands couldn't arrive from reserves and shoot the devgants. The only thing he could shoot on arrival is the Lictor. All I have on my right flank is some hormagaunts, so I keep thim out of LOS hoping to just eat up a Skorpius's shooting to remove them. My Hive Guard and Hierodule kill the 2 chicken walkers on his right flank, leaving him with nothing in that table quarter. I then double shot with the Hive Guard into one of his Skorpiuses and do some damage to it. I again cast Catalyst on the Hive Guard.

On his turn 3 he scores 10. The bomber makes a 180 and kills the remaining Hormagaunts on my right flank. He decides that playing a shoot out game with Catalyst Hive Guard was not something he wanted to continue doing so he moved the Skorpiuses out of range and just killed the Pyrovores and some devgants. The reserved jazz-hands just arrive somewhere far back, deciding it wasn't worth trading them for 2 points on Engage. 

On my turn 3 I score 10. I decide I don't have enough devgants left to try and hold 3 objectives, so I just pack everything onto the two objectives in my corner of the table, hoping I can get 40 points on primary and keep all my WWSWFs alive. I do keep the devgants in the left table quarter and I launch my last hormagaunt unit into the right table quarter to get me 2 more engage points. After that I wouldn't have enough units to continue to score engage.

One his turn 4 he scores 15. He launches his bomber into my table quarter and drops bombs on Hive guard, killing 2 (1 only had 1 wound left) leaving me with 3 hive guard. He also turns off all my synapse with his bomber, so I had to make a morale check on the Hive Guard. Thankfully they passed. For shooting, he killed my Hormagaunts in the right corner and killed more devgants. After morale, I had 6 devgants left. My Hierodule is a bit more exposed now so he shoots lascannons at it but only does 4 damage. 

On my turn 4 I score 10. I kill the bomber. He forces an explosion and wounds a bunch of stuff but nothing dies. I shoot the Hive Guard at the lascannon chickens and kill 1.

On his turn 5 he scores 15 and maxes primary. He advances a dunerider onto his right side objective to try and keep me from getting an easy objective on the last turn and to give him more engage points. He keeps everything back and kills the remainder of my devgants.

On my turn 5 I shoot and kill the the units he has on my right side objective and double move the swamlord and the Hierodule onto his right side objective so that I hold it, scoring me 15 for primary. But since I can't get engage again and I can't kill any of his skorpiuses... we finish 88 to 86.

So that was a much closer game than I was expecting. As a result of all my close games, I won the 'Grinder' award so that's cool. But man what an exhausting tournament.

[piersonsmuppet]

Nice that the Pyrovores had a shining moment! I know you said you won't likely be making changes, but I'm curious on the Pyrovore performance more and how close they might be to the chopping block. With the experience you have now, what are the Pros/Cons you've found vs a Lictor or min Warrior unit? (price aside)

[zimko]

May 17, 2021 16:18:46 GMT piersonsmuppet said:

Nice that the Pyrovores had a shining moment! I know you said you won't likely be making changes, but I'm curious on the Pyrovore performance more and how close they might be to the chopping block. With the experience you have now, what are the Pros/Cons you've found vs a Lictor or min Warrior unit? (price aside)

Hmm, well. There's a few advantages to the 2 Pyrovores over 3 Warriors or a Lictor. Lets take a look.


Pros vs 3 Warriors:
1. 2 Power level for the unit means I can put them in reserves with the 20 devgants for 1 CP. I didn't do this the whole tournament though as I found having 2 units of Devgants meant I could start them on the board and be pretty confident that I'd still have a significant number of devgants for shooting in turn 2 after my opponent does their thing. So I didn't feel the need to reserve them. So that pro isn't really a pro.
2. They are much better at killing something than Warriors. They killed 3 dark reapers in 1 turn which I don't think the warriors could do since dark reapers have 3+ saves. They also helped kill some blade guard.
3. Decent melee deterrent. Some skirmish units would be hesitant to charge 2 heavy flamers. This also didn't come up in the tournament.
4. Advance and shoot. Ranged threat.
Cons vs 3 Warriors:
1. Slightly less durable. Same defensive profile but 8 wounds vs 9. 
2. Not Troops. Obsec would have made the warrior's ability to kill the Dark Reapers not relevant for the objective. In all other cases though, their lack of ob sec didn't matter since they were mostly used for scramblers or engage.
3. Access to -1 damage. Eh I doubt I'd spend a CP on this anyway.
4. Slower by 1".

Pros vs Lictor:
1. More resilient. My opponent has to invest more into killing Pyrovores than they would a Lictor.
2. Can kill stuff.
Cons vs Lictor:
1. Can't deep strike.
2. Slower by 4".
3. Can't deliver Devgants if I wanted to do that.

So I think 1 Lictor is still mandatory for the option of deep striking Devgants and for scramblers. I really didn't miss having a 2nd Lictor for scramblers or Engage. The Pyrovores worked well for engage while starting on the board because they were easy for my opponent to ignore since they weren't a threat.

Warriors however make a strong case. I think that, if I'm taking 2 Pyrovores for 56 points, then I might as well just make them Warriors. However, if I want to save points then taking only 1 Pyrovore for 28 pts would be just as effective. My original intent for taking the Pyrovores was their Power Level being so low that I could reserve the 20 devgants and the Pyrovores together for 1 CP. But that was really unnecessary and I'd rather keep the CP for movement shenanigans late game.

So with that in mind. I'd change the list to remove the Pyrovores in favor of 3 Warriors with Rending Claws (because that's what I can do with 7 points and rending claws would allow me to punch 3+ armor more easily).

[zimko]

May 17, 2021 6:35:41 GMT tomb said:

Congrats on your results, it's a tough meta out there.

I like your list and haven't played my Nids for a while.

Please could I ask for a Tactica on how your list operates?

Much appreciated.
Tomb

Since my game overviews were a bit longer than expected I'll try to answer this more directly.

The first challenge of any game is to pick Secondaries. So here are the rules I follow for that.
1. Look at my opponent's list. If it's something like Drukhari with a lot of small units then take Grind them Down. Otherwise, take WWSWF.
2. Consider Bring it Down, Titanslayer and Thin the Ranks. If scoring at least 10 points on any of these is reasonably easy to do then take one of those. 
3. Mission secondary. Is it achievable? (Direct Assault is a decent one). If yes then consider taking it.
4. Engage is always reliable for some points. Take it if the above doesn't result in 3 good picks.
5. Can my opponent reliably deny me Scramblers. (Orks or other tyranids). If not then take Scramblers if the above hasn't resulted in 3 secondaries yet.

Deployment:
1. Consider what long range threats my opponent has. Look for anything that can ignore LOS or threaten the Hive Guard. Admech skorpius for example are a threat to consider.
2. I deploy Hormagaunts first, 1 on each flank usually out of LOS, just to see where my opponent deploys some of his stuff.
3. If there's only 1 good spot for Hive Guard, then I may deploy them next, or I may deploy characters around that location. Again I'm trying to see where my opponent's long range threats are put.
4. If I can, I will deploy the Dima far out of range of any of his long range threats. Or at least far enough that if he moves up to shoot he Dima, then his ranged threats are going to be within range of my Exocrine and Hive Guard. 
5. Hide the Swarmlord, Exocrine and Barbed Hierodule best I can. As Tyranids we have excellent movement, so I try to take advantage of that by deploying as far away from threats as I can.
6. Put the Pyrovores on a flank for engage (or warriors if I take them instead) and fill all the gaps between units with devgants, making sure there's no way for some super fast biker unit or something to get into melee with Hive Guard.

Gameplay.
- I have 2 sacrificial Hormagaunt units. On turn 1 I'll usually sacrifice one for Engage. I may also use it to deploy scramblers in the middle if that is achievable. Otherwise the pyrovore/warrior unit will do scramblers in my deployment.
- If there's something close enough for Hive Guard to kill then I kill it.
- Save CP for double shoot and double move and double advance. These are my most used stratagems. Occasionally I might find use for +1 damage like the situation with the 2 Raiders that I knocked down to 9 wounds.
- Consider any possible targets for the Dima. If there's nothing good to go after, then just keep the Dima back. I don't want to sacrifice him for no gain. Against most Space Marine variants, look for a character that might barely be exposed to a charge from a weird angle. The Dima can jump over models so go for the big plays. Space Marines without their auras and buff characters are much easier to deal with.
- Against Drukhari, kill vehicles. Kill as many Transports as you can as quickly as possible so that you can remove his mobility and start chewing through the contents. I usually save the double shooting for the devgants to kill as many infantry as I can. I'm always taking Grind them Down against Drukhari so I try to maximize my kills.
- Against Death Guard, don't waste the Dima on anything that removes rerolls. I send him at something he can kill, and just be a pain in the butt for him to remove. Death Guard are slow so I use Overrun where I can to get out of his charge range. I leave the tough stuff to my shooting and smites. If he has PBCs then I send the Dima after one or 2 of those.
- I consider mobility to be my opponent's number 1 asset. So I spend a lot of my first 2 turns killing anything that has a movement greater than 7. This allows me to use my own mobility to stay away from threats and to engage on my terms. Bikes, Cavalry and Transports are usually the things I kill first.
- I always hold 2 objectives and I always make sure my opponent doesn't score 15. I only try to go for 15 points on primary when I can do so without sacrificing my 2 objectives. I only need to score 15 once to max primary. If I don't then I just score 40 which is still fine. If there's an opportunity to make my opponent only score 5 on a Primary and it's not too costly to do so then I will go for that.

[zimko]

Here's another idea. I could remove 1 Pyrovore to give me 30 points (I had 1998 points). I can put those points into reinforcements. Then I have the option of using the spore mine stratagem to deploy them mid-board as a means for countering scout moves and infiltrators. If my opponents don't have any of those to worry about then I'm just playing with 1 less Pyrovore, but I'd still have the 1 Pyrovore to get engage points and perform scramblers.

[piersonsmuppet]

If the loss of a Pyrovore helps make the Ad-Mech match-up less of a coin-flip, I would say the idea has potential. Otherwise, does access to the stratagem make other close match-ups more favorable? I don't think making Grind slightly less favorable in the match-ups where the Spore Mines do nothing for you is worth it unless it improves your more difficult match-ups.

Would the Spore Mines have changed how Ad-Mech's T1 played out during the Maryland Open? I'm not very familiar with Ad-Mech's mechanics/units, and am not sure the impact they would have.