1k points Tournament - 4 games in 5 weeks - Battle Reports

[Zorkubag]

Hello Tyranid Hive!

First game of a 1000 points tournament across five weeks, one game per week.

The adversaries are Death Guard, Harlequins, Drukhari and Battle Sisters.

The first game was against the Death Guard, with in summary:

A Lord of Contagion (warlord)
with 3 Deathshroud Terminators

A Foul Blightspawn

5 Blightlords Terminators

A Foetid Bloat-drone with Plaguespitters

A Plagueburst Crawler

10 cultists and 10 poxwalkers

My army consist of a Kronos Patrol:

1 Neurothrope (warlord) with Symbiostorm, Resonance barb and Synaptic Lynchpin
--
24 Termagants (19 devourers, 5 fleshborers)

20 Devilgants

3 ripper swarms
--
5 hive guards
--
1 Exocrine (Dermic symbiosis)

1 Tyrannofex with acid spray

QUICK BATTLE REPORT :
The DG quickly grabbed the 2 middle objectives, with on one side a wave consisting of the Deathshrouds accompanied by the Lord of Contagion, the Blightspawn, the Drone and 10 pox, and on the other side 5 blightlords terminators. The Plagueburst and cultists stayed in the back, shooting from afar without los and keeping their base objective.

Not willing to suffer the fire from the Drone, the Tyranids combined their buffed firepower on it, and managed to remove its last wound by the skin of their teeth after some poor dice rolls.

The Lord of Contagion finds himself exposed away from its Deathshroud friends, after sprinting 6" twice, as if he was not wearing a 150 kg armor with its guts dangling on the ground. The termagants think that it is their time to shine, they performed an heroic advance towards him in the hope of saturating him to death with some double shooting and symbiostorm. They did forget however that advancing and shooting someone in cover would make them hit on 6+, and after about 120 shots, the warlord lost about 0 wounds.
In return, the Deatshrouds and the Lord swiftly mowed them down in melee.

In the meantime, the Plagueburst crawler finished the hiveguards and the exocrine in 2 turns.

The DG controlled 3 on 4 objectives, are dangerously approaching the Tyranids deployment zone, while the Tyranids firepower is flickering

20 devilgants are deployed to defend the flank from the LOC, deathsrouds, and the blightspawn. Every remaining bug units gets in range. The neurothrope casually casts a smite on the LOC, the bolt goes straight between his eyes, fries his brain and one shots him (6 wounds straight)! After that the flank in cleaned with the devilgants and the tyrannofex, the pox are also destroyed and the objective is taken.

Meanwhile the plagueburst easily kills the tyrannofex, and smash the gants turn after turn.

On the other side of the map the blightlord terminators remain unchallenged on the objective, their final move is to charge the rippers in charge of holding the base objective, and wipe 'em good.

The final score is 66-34 for the Death Guard.

DEBRIEF :
All in all, the plagueburst crawler really hurt, munching through more than 600 key Tyranid points in 3 turns (5 hive guards with the mortar, exocrine and tyrannofex with the entropy cannons, some gants later), and I had nothing to deal with it. This seriously impaired my capacity to deal damage and stop the flood of marching death guards. The hive guards and exocrine only got the chance to shoot once.
I made a huge mistake trying to take out the Lord of Contagion with an advancing big blob of gaunts, while he was in cover. They failed and were wiped, leaving me no choice than to make the reserve gaunt unit appear to save the same flank. That left the other side with the unchallenged terminators on the objective and nothing to counter them with.
Due to lack of firepower, I couldn't contest objectives before way too late in the battle, and my opponent happily scored 15 points per turn, I could never recover.

While the tyrannofex is very good, though unreliable, I wish I could change the list. I would remove it and take more bodies such as hormagaunts, or a big blob of warriors to play more around objectives, contesting, be more mobile, or have some more things to strategically sacrifice. Or maybe a Tyrant instead, for more psychic support and maybe melee capabilities.

The list was build around the idea that the only way to bypass the amount of invulnerable saves that I will encounter was shooting saturation.
And also that really big bugs such as Dimachaerons do not last long in the local meta of D6+2 or D3+3 damages, and with a low damage output against invulnerable saves as well (it performed incredibly badly in tests games).
So I did a lot of stats but, as a new (returning) player, I didn't think much about board control and objectives, and that is something that I'll keep in mind next time I build a tournament list.
My opponent was a returning player too, and didn't use his codex to its full possibilities, but it was clear since round 2 that I would not be able to score much points.

Also, my neurothrope is now renowned in the tournament as the sniper of Lord of Contagions, I'll give it a little name

Next game this week-end against Harlequins!

[zimko]

Termagants advancing and shooting someone in dense cover does not make them hit on 6+. You can never have your to hit rolls be reduced by more than 1.

[Zorkubag]

Apr 21, 2021 14:27:36 GMT zimko said:

Termagants advancing and shooting someone in dense cover does not make them hit on 6+. You can never have your to hit rolls be reduced by more than 1.

Ha damn you are right I completely forgot, this might have changed a few things. It was still a bit of a not well thought out yolo move It was my opponent that reminded me of the additional -1 to hit thanks to the cover, but I know he did that in all good faith. This will teach me.

[Zorkubag]

Second game against a mix of Harlequins and Eldars. The list contained roughly:

1 Troupe Master, with 5 players all with fusion pistols and caresses, embarked in a starweaver.

6 players, also with fusion pistols and caresses, embarked in a starweaver.

1 Death Jester

1 Warlock skyrunner

2 * 5 Dire avengers with exarchs, embarked in a wave serpent.

1 Hornet

QUICK BATTLE REPORT:
I have the first turn. The hive guards with symbiostorm destroy the starweaver transport containing the Troupe master and 5 players. They shoot a second time and the second starweaver is left with 1 wound. The exocrine doesn't do much.

All eldars and Harlequins disembark. A few gaunts are killed in the shooting phase. The unit of 5 players charge the first unit of gaunts, and they are all killed by the devourer overwatch (13 6+ on the hit roll, toughness of 3... .
The second unit of 6 players charge the second unit of gaunts. The gaunts are wiped, but in return, thanks to the caustic blood stratagem, 3 of them perish.

In the next turn, the hornet, the last starweaver and the remaining players are killed by the firepower of the hive guards, exocrine, tyrannofex, remaining devilgaunts and Neurothrope.
From then on, the eldar player doesn't have any threats anymore, and by turn 4 there is not a single eldar standing. I only lost one unit of 20 gaunts during the game.

The final score is 67 to 28 for the Tyranids.

DEBRIEF:
I was lucky enough to get the first turn, and the destruction of the warlord's starweaver was a big deal for my opponent. I didn't know, but the hive guards were in range of a T1 charge from the Troupe Master, which might have changed the game drastically. He could then not deal with the hive guards, and they wrecked havock turn after turn.
My opponent did some mistakes, like losing 5 players from an overwatch when he could have avoided that by charging first with the last starweaver. And we both agreed that his army roster lacked punch on the craftworld side. The wave serpent, avengers and warlock did not do much except hold 1 objective. They killed less than half a unit of gaunts, and 1 ripper in the entire game.
The god of luck was also clearly on my side this time, doing 5's and 6's all the time, while my opponent only got 1's and 2's on important roll. It was so systematic that it was almost embarrassing.
Next this week is a game against the Sisters of Battle !